


Ex Gratia

by determunition



Series: Null and Void [2]
Category: Cuphead (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, More characters to come, but like it's gonna be a wild ride, former romance i guess, i hate spoiling stuff, it's like a dante's inferno thing, it's mostly implied, like for really reals this time, not sure if you'd count that as ships, sequel to previous work, snippets of other characters, some dark stuff but like, that's all I'll say, uh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2019-09-30 10:10:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 52,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17222003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/determunition/pseuds/determunition
Summary: After making peace with most of the Isle over their short yet indelible stint collecting debts for the Devil, Cuphead and Mugman have spent the past year getting to know those they've been warned away from for their entire childhoods. But when the death of a loved one quite pointedly turns their lives upside down, they find themselves back in the lion's den sooner than they would have liked. In order to pry the Devil's claws away from Inkwell Isle for good, the brothers must confront adversaries they've never intended to conquer – tangible or otherwise.





	1. Moribund and Malleable

**Author's Note:**

> surprise, fellas! unless you've never read my stuff before, in which case, welcome! welcome, welcome, welcome. i have been waiting nearly six months to drop this, and i can wait no longer. i'm excited to be writing again, and man, this one'll be a trip. if by chance you are new, i would like to make it clear that this is a sequel to my last fic, null and void. this will put emphasis on different characters than null and void, but i suggest giving it a read for extra context and, of course, if you like what you see here! right, i'll ramble no longer. enjoy the ride!

“Cuphead!” Mugman cried, running over to his brother, who had just returned from the fair. He chuckled. “Gee, Mugs, miss me that much –“

“Cuphead, it’s Elder Kettle.” 

The cup’s eyes widened. He grabbed his brother by the wrist and pulled him along. “You’re sure?”

“What do you mean, of course I’m sure! He said it himself!” The two dashed frantically across the first Isle, its residents watching quizzically as they dashed by. Of course, the brothers didn’t notice this. Nothing was in their sights besides their home, and their grandfather. 

Cuphead threw open the door and rushed upstairs, Mugman not far behind. He found Elder Kettle’s bedroom door and opened that a bit more quietly. The kettle lay in bed, an oil can on his bedside table that appeared unused for some time. Cuphead wondered if he could even use it anymore. 

“Boys, I thought I told you… not to run up the stairs,” Elder Kettle wheezed. “You could trip… and fall… and break…”

“Well, what if you… you know…” Mugman trailed off. The kettle chuckled squeakily. “Kicked the bucket while you took your time? I’d at least die happy knowing you weren’t going to spill everywhere.”

“Gee, that’s a little morbid,” muttered Cuphead. “Well, it’s the truth. I might as well get on giving it after lying to your faces for years,” Elder Kettle sighed. The brothers hummed in response, still not sure how to feel about something that should have been resolved months ago. “You’ve been a great grandad, anyway,” Mugman finally murmured. The kettle rocked slightly from side to side, a gesture that passed for shaking his head. 

“You’ve got rose-colored glasses, my boy. I kept you away from the world at every opportunity, didn’t tell you what was in the forest, or in the observatory on the hilltop. I let you go off to the casino, just like I did –“

“That’s not true,” Cuphead interrupted. “You gave us enough warnings about the casino to fill a whole book with ‘em!”

“But when it came to prevention, you slipped right past me. That Devil knew what he was doing with my deal, making me weak by taking my soul…” he trailed off. The brothers stared, confused. “But he hasn’t taken your soul yet,” Mugman vocalized. 

“Not taken, no. Just…” he stopped saying coherent words as the brothers realized his mouth had locked up. They grabbed the oil can and slid it under Elder Kettle’s mustache so that they could get his mouth working again. He sputtered as the oil went into his mouth and spat it out. “I… don’t have much time, boys,” he muttered slowly, trying not to overwork his jaw, or what passed for a jaw on a kettle. “I never figured out… who would care for you, or… where you were to go… cocky to the end, I suppose…”

“We can still live here,” Cuphead suggested. “Everyone can take care of us when we need it. Me an’ Mugs can handle ourselves otherwise.”

“Mugs and I.”

“Huh?” Cuphead asked. 

“Not ‘me and Mugs.’ Mugs and I,” Elder Kettle elaborated, quieter than before. He laughed shakily. “See, you can handle yourselves in a scrap, talk a crazy man off a ledge, but… at the end of the day… I never taught you a thing… just kept you inside, and… preached without practicing…” he trailed off, his voice growing quieter and quieter, until with a small squeak it faded completely. His eyes remained half open, like he was caught in a photograph seconds before falling asleep. Mugman’s hands, still gripping Elder Kettle’s, began trembling. Cuphead put his own hand over them, and his brother finally looked up with shiny, overflowing eyes. 

“Mugs, we oughtta… tell everyone. At least, we need help to… you know…” Cuphead rambled. “I’ll go to… the farm, the garden, the observatory…”

“Wait, wait,” murmured Mugman. “We’ve got to take this one step at a time. What if… no one cares enough to come to a funeral?”

“… All right. Well, I know we need at least one thing to put Elder Kettle to rest, so… let’s just start there, okay Mugs?”

Mugman nodded. “Let’s go.”

 

—-

After over a year of things going along as they once did, Moe and his compatriots had become a little more acquainted with those around them, perhaps even more than they had in the times before everything went into a spiral. Included in this roster of relatively friendly neighbors were the cups, and it wasn’t uncommon for them to visit, maybe pester the farmers for a sampling of their crops. However, today their mood seemed strangely somber, and Moe’s immediate thought was that whatever they’d come to say or ask, he wasn’t equipped to respond to it. 

“Boys,” he addressed shortly.

“Mister Tato, we’ve got a… situation,” Mugman murmured. That was odd. They’d never felt the obligation to address him so formally before. 

“Uh… well, why don’t you tell the both of us inside?” he offered. “Might… rain, or somethin’.” They nodded, and the three of them approached the small farmhouse in silence. 

“Moe, do you think the night will be too cloudy to – oh! Cuphead and Mugman. What a pleasant surprise!” Weepy exclaimed. “I’ll make some tea straightaway. Oh, but Cuphead, you like coffee, don’t you –“

“Weepy, they’ve got somethin’ important to say,” Moe interrupted. Weepy stopped in his tracks and came over to join the others at the kitchen table.

“I see. Terribly sorry to ramble on, ah, what is it you wanted to tell us?” he asked, hands folded delicately on the tabletop. The two exchanged glances and both their faces tensed. 

“It’s… it’s Elder Kettle,” Mugman started. “He’s… well, he… he-he…”

“He died just a few minutes ago,” Cuphead finished bluntly. Moe’s eyebrows went up in surprise, and Weepy bit his bottom lip as it quivered. 

“Oh, dear…” he murmured, voice wobbling. “Oh, dear, dear, dear… I can’t imagine how you’re taking this…”

“What do you need us for?” Moe asked. “That is, uh, what can we do for you?”

“We-we don’t wanna impose!” Mugman denied quickly. “We just… the-the body’s… g-g-gotta go somewhere…” 

“Oh. Cripes,” Moe muttered, watching the cup narrow his eyes to keep his tears at bay. “Well, if you… need a hole dug, I can -“

“Moe! You could say it a little more respectably!” Weepy cried. 

“No, it’s alright, mister Weepy!” Cuphead insisted. “We do need a… a grave, and… we were wondering if we should… have a funeral. We don’t have much money, but surely we can just invite most of the Isle over to pay respects, right?” Now it was the former debtors’ turns to trade glances. 

“Well, Cuphead, that’s a lovely idea, but…” Weepy trailed off. “You see, the Isle’s getting to know the two of you quite well, you know that. But your grandfather, he… was never very close with any of us. Oh, we were… acquaintances, back in the day, but then –“

“You guys sold out and left him cheated and alone,” Cuphead finished, head propped in his hands. “Yeah, I get it. You don’t have to sugarcoat it. Our old man reminds you folks of bad times and better days, and you’d rather not go pretend to mourn a guy you’d feel guilty about pretending to mourn.”

“Why, I – Cuphead, your grandfather was –“

“Quit it, the kid’s not an idiot,” Moe ordered, standing up. “I’m sorry about your pops, I really am, but that would be one painful funeral. Come on, I’ve got a spade in the shed. Let’s lay the old guy to rest.”

—-

If it weren’t for Mugman’s tight, trembling grip on his hand, Cuphead would probably be biting his own finger off trying not to cry. As it was, he’d opted to grind his teeth against his bottom lip, and with luck he wouldn’t mark up the porcelain too bad. His other hand was busy holding his now late grandfather’s cane. 

_And finally, to Cuphead I give my cane, for it was once your greatest ambition to possess it. It is my hope that this will remain a symbol and reminder of your ceaseless spirit. Never let that spirit dwindle, my boy…_

Cuphead had vague memories of wanting the walking stick, when it would serve as a sword in several of Elder Kettle’s rousing tales, making a younger Cuphead believe a crutch could be legendary. The old man could really sell a fantasy if he wanted to. Unfortunately, the greatest of these fantasies was all too ignorantly accepted, past the age when the brothers should have known better. 

“All right, that’s about six feet. Any deeper and I could bury myself alive. Wouldn’t that be a first-rate relapse.” Moe hoisted himself out of the makeshift grave he’d dug, and turned to the boys. “You need help getting him in the ground?”

Mugman shook his head. “That’s all right, mister Tato. You’ve done enough. We don’t mean to be a bother.”

“Eh…” he trailed off, watching the brothers’ tense expressions. He sighed and his own tight formality dropped. “Enough with the mister. I ain’t worth that. … Well, I’d best get back to the farm. You boys know where you’re going?”

Cuphead managed a shrug. “We’ll spend tonight here. After that… we’ll think of something.”

“Alright then. Weepy an’ I ain’t… parent-types, but… Psy’s bed’s up for grabs ‘til he’s back from that mainland convention next week,” Moe offered. 

“We’ll think about it. Thanks, miste– er, Moe,” Mugman muttered, stumbling over his words. 

“Don’t mention it, kid. Really.”

—-

Hours later, after a patted-down mound of dirt had been made a permanent feature of the backyard, Cuphead sat up in bed, a candle burning on his bedside table, unable to sleep. He’d had his straw pinned between his teeth for the past half hour, nothing in his head besides his soul, drinking and feeling the warm substance circulate back up to his head in an endless loop. He jumped as this equilibrium was broken by a knock at his door. 

“Cuphead? You awake?” Cuphead spat out his straw. “If you’re awake,” he answered. Mugman pushed open his door, clearly having just finished crying.

“I can’t sleep,” he murmured. “Elder Kettle… his room is right across from mine, and… and…”

“Oh,” said Cuphead, understanding. “You want to switch?”

“No, it’s not that, well, it kind of is, but it’s more about… he’d always be there for me. Every time I had a nightmare, or started spilling in my sleep, he’d always know about it somehow, and I knew that no matter what happened when I was sleeping, it’d be fine. But now, you know… I know he’s not there.” Cuphead smiled a little. “Mugs, I’m right down the hall. I’m no Elder Kettle, but –”

“Cuphead, could I sleep with you tonight?” Mugman interrupted. Cuphead sat up more, surprised by the request. “Golly, Mugs, I dunno if that’ll work. We could bump into each other, or one of us could push the other out of bed, or… it’s just kinda dangerous is all.”

“Please…” Mugman murmured. “You know neither of us are going to sleep very well anyway.” Cuphead mulled over the proposition, and conceded that his brother was right. 

“Okay,” he said. “But you’re sleeping closest to the wall. I can’t have you fall on the floor and get broken again.” Mugman nodded and Cuphead got out of bed, letting his brother slide in before getting back under the covers himself. 

“We’ll get someone to come by and check on us, maybe even someone we can stay with…” Cuphead reassured dully, putting his straw back in his mouth. Mugman hummed in muffled response. Cuphead had given him two of his three pillows, which his brother was thankfully tired enough not to notice. “M’sure Wally wouldn’t mind having a couple’a kids to look after…” muttered Cuphead after some thought. He heard Mugman’s breathing slowly even out as he fell asleep, and went back to his soul-drinking delirium, hoping that the small action of swallowing would keep him from falling asleep himself. Unfortunately, coupled with Mugman’s slow breathing, the rhythm of his soul spinning through his straw, down his throat and back up into his head worked away at his eyelids, until he could no longer keep them open and his vision plunged into warm darkness.

\---

“Wakey wakey, Kettle.”

Kettle? Was that his name? He didn’t have much time to consider the prospect before he felt three sharp simultaneous jabs in… him. Somewhere. He vaguely recalled what a body was meant to look like, and couldn’t pinpoint where he might be feeling the pain. He couldn’t feel where he ended. However, he could see, now at least, and figured out where he should be looking. Once he laid his eyes (at least what he was sure were eyes) on the source of the jabs, everything came back.

“Devil,” he breathed, his voice barely a whisper. The creature before him grinned. “That’s me. Been a while, hasn’t it?”

“I… I hardly remember you,” Kettle muttered, baffled. He was surprised he even remembered what the Devil looked like. 

“Eh, it’s fine, I ain’t all that memorable,” the Devil reassured him with a quizzical grin. Kettle scrunched up his face skeptically, noting that he had more to manipulate than before. “I imagine you’d have been a better liar,” he returned. The Devil laughed. “If you’re imagining that, then I probably am.”

“Why am I here?” Kettle asked, finding himself able to stand up. On what, he wasn’t entirely sure. “I fulfilled my end of the deal.”

“You’re one funny guy,” the Devil remarked, an office forming around them. “I’m brewing up a new vessel just for you, and you’re askin’ why you aren’t screaming in eternal confusion and suffering right now? Bad move, mister. If I was Dice, you’d get your wish right now.” He snapped his fingers and a small imp appeared with a box of cigars. He took one and lit it, blowing a large cloud of smoke into the room. “But I ain’t Dice. So we’re gonna have some fun instead.” 

“What do you mean a new –”

“Later, later. Look,” the Devil ordered, gesturing in front of him. The cloud of smoke didn’t dissipate, instead hanging in the air as a scene slowly took shape within it. Kettle squinted, trying to discern what he was looking at before widening his eyes. “Are those… my boys?”

“Nuh-uh, _my_ boys, Kettle,” the Devil snickered. “But sure, let’s call ‘em yours.” He let Kettle watch the two sleep for a little. If he could sweat nervously, he would. _Goodness, they’re going to get themselves hurt, sleeping like that…_

“They would, huh?” the Devil responded. “Bet you’ve had that thought more times than you could count.” 

Kettle nodded. “You made them so fragile. I should have known you’d make the only people that loved me so… losable.”

“Yeah, you should’ve. Well, desperate folks tend to forget lots of things. But you know, even grumpy ol’ monsters like myself feel bad sometimes. And hey, your boys are pretty damn careful for their age. I’d say they’ve earned a reward of sorts.” 

Kettle stared, confused and suspicious. “A reward,” he repeated flatly. The Devil nodded enthusiastically. 

“Oh, yes! There’s so many things they just can’t do, bein’ cups an’ all.” Kettle’s eyes widened as he put together what the Devil was getting at. 

“You mean…”

“That’s right! Wouldn’t you love to see them run around, having the time of their lives, not a care in the world… without you?” Kettle downcast his gaze as it all became clear to him. Everything he’d ever wanted to do with them, to watch them do… and he was an outsider looking in. “Now you’re getting it, Kettle. I just want to do something for you and the boys, you know… out of the kindness of my heart.”

Kettle sighed, glad he hadn’t the strength to be angry. He was moreso made guilty by the fact that he wanted to be angry at all. “At least they’ll finally be able to live,” he muttered. “They don’t deserve the life you gave them.” 

The Devil grinned. “Don’t be so glum. I said I’d do something for you, too. And what I’ll do, well… those boys are gonna need the extra durability.”

\---

Cuphead’s eyes started hurting, and he blinked the sunlight out of them as he realized it was morning. He was horribly tired, and the cracked ceiling above him started to blur as his eyes closed again. 

_Wait. The ceiling?!_

Cuphead jerked into a sitting position. How long had he been tipped over?! And how was he not spilled everywhere? His bedsheets were strewn around him, and it was clear he’d fallen out of bed. If that was the case, he would have cracked somewhere. He put his hands to his face, trying to feel out any cracks before stopping cold. His face didn’t feel right. It gave beneath his fingers, like it was partially melted. Unless he just had that many cracks, in which case… 

He frantically tried to feel out any other cracks, still feeling nothing besides the strange, melted consistency, until his fingers came into contact with something else. A texture that he was familiar with from the few times Ribby had convinced him to spar. 

_Hair…_

Something snapped in Cuphead and he scrambled to his feet, steadying himself as his head started spinning. He dug through his desk drawer until he found a small hand mirror. He pointed it to his face, and simply stared a moment. It was still him, certainly, but he felt like an outsider looking in on someone else. The mop of dark hair, the dull-toned skin, it didn’t feel like his. His reflection started blurring, and Cuphead realized his hand was shaking. He dropped the mirror onto the desk, and almost fell back to the floor before he was reinvigorated by another thought: _what about Mugs?_

He turned to his bed and yanked the covers off his brother, a small indiscernible noise escaping him as he saw that his brother had undergone the same fate. 

“Mugs! Mugs! Wake up, will you?!” he cried, shaking his brother awake. Mugman’s eyes cracked open groggily. “Cuphead… what’re you – gah!” he exclaimed, his eyes shooting open. “What happened to your face?”

“It happened to yours too, Mugs,” he panted, finally getting ahold of his breathing. Mugman blinked a few times, then sat up in shock as he caught sight of his arms and legs, both of which, he realized, were the wrong color. “Good gosh,” he gasped. “You don’t mean to say we’re…” Cuphead nodded and handed him the mirror. Mugman stared for a moment. He put a hand to where his cracks would normally be, and found nothing. Just smooth skin. “How did this happen?” he asked absentmindedly, seemingly still trying to convince himself he wasn’t dreaming. “Why did it happen?”

“I don’t know,” replied Cuphead defeatedly, running his gloved fingers through his hair curiously. “But I’d bet my bottom dollar the Devil’s got something to do with it. Trouble is, he ain’t around…”

“Then we’ve gotta get the next best thing,” replied Mugman. 

“Mugs, he won’t be any help. It’s no secret he doesn’t like us, and it’s not like he still gets news on the Devil’s every move,” Cuphead reasoned. 

“No, but if there’s one fellow who could guess at the Devil’s intentions, why he did this… it’s Dice.”


	2. The Severed Right Hand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh, you fellas thought the twists were over? we are just getting started. in fact this is like twists: the fanfic. so many twists in here you have no idea, and they're all as goofy as the one in this chapter. so enjoy!

“ _Herr_ Dice, you have been taking up my couch for more zan a year now, you must know by zis point zat keeping it clear is your job!”

Dice navigated a finger lazily through the ashes on the couch’s arm. “Ain’t as if you’ve got any visitors. If it bothers you so very much…”

“It does not -“

“Don’t lie to the king of the liars, mister Werman. You’re just itching with compulsivity, I can see it. And unfortunately for you, I don’t care one bit how bothered you are,” Dice interrupted smoothly. Werner’s eye twitched involuntarily and he stayed stock still a moment before shuffling off into the kitchen, evidently without the energy to argue. 

“ _König von nichts, das ist was du bist_ …” he muttered gruffly from the other room. Dice had to chuckle at that. As a matter of convenience, and perhaps proximity, he’d picked up a bit of the veteran’s native tongue during his extended lodging. As such, Werner’s rambling torrents weren’t entirely safe from Dice’s ears or his wit. Now alone in the living room, the former manager irritatedly brushed the ashes off the couch. He may have had to create his own mischief without its usual instigator as his superior, but at the end of the day tidiness took a world of precedence over making others mildly discontented. 

“Ven vill you leave my house, Dice? Ze sofa must have compressed by five inches since you began… vell, overstaying your velcome.”

Dice stood up and walked to the kitchen’s threshold, leaning his shoulder against it as he watched the former debtor put the kettle on a stove burner. “I go out plenty. You think the groceries are brought out by the rats in the walls?”

“Vell no, I killed zem all,” Werner remarked dryly. “Joking aside, you only go out to get ze groceries ven you are out of cigarettes. And usually zat is all you get.”

“Mister Werman, you know I –“

“ _Genug_ , Dice, you know precisely vat I speak of. Zere are ozer houses and apartments to stink up vith smoke, you know.”

“Werman, I couldn’t possibly leave your humble abode. Who’d keep the dust to a minimum and, might I add, be willin’ to sit through hours of tediously orated trains of thought? You didn’t call the doctor for that feline tin can because you’ve got friends to spare,” Dice pointed out with a grin. Werner groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. 

“You really are a… a… _backpfeifengesicht_ most of the time,” he finally said. 

Dice opted to pretend he knew precisely what that word meant and snickered in response. “You know it,” he proudly replied. 

The doorbell rang, Werner jumping at the noise as usual. “ _Gott_ , ven vill I demolish zat blight of a device?” he rambled, ambling over to the door. Dice would make fun of that amble, but his arm wasn’t so well-oiled either, even after it healed. Who could be at the door, anyway? Probably some sleazy con man. _Say, there’s an idea. Go an’ be a good old-fashioned snake oil salesman. It ain’t movin’ out but it’s money in the bank… well, not if everyone already knows you’re the slickest sonofagun in the Isle… but does everybody? Mm, I do get around…_

“Hey, uh, mister Werman? We’re looking for King Dice…”

Dice sat up at that. Who could possibly be looking for him? _Maybe the Devil decided he’d finally try an’ get my goat in person. What, did he send a handful a’ imps in disguise? Did he bring himself in disguise? Nah, he can’t hide himself as anything that ain’t some grand, flashy symbol of some description, and by that point it ain’t even hiding no more. Can it, Dice, it’s prolly just those dumb kids._

“Dice, ze… ah, cups… are here to see you,” Werner called. _Bingo_. “Zey say zat it is urgent, and I am inclined to believe it.”

“Urgent, heh. Pro’lly just tryin’ to drag me outta the hou–“

Dice was instantly miffed at himself for being rendered speechless so easily. With his experience, he’d seen much stranger. But of all the matters he’d imagined the brothers would label “urgent,” he had to admit that the two of them appearing as a pair of confused human boys had not even made the list out of sheer absurdity. 

“Well…” he muttered, struggling to reassert control over the situation. “What have the two of you been dealin’ in?”

“Nothing, mister!” replied the boy whose blue shoes and blue-striped card in his hat band most likely denoted him as Mugman.   
Before he could go on the other boy, of course being Cuphead, interrupted. 

“We just woke up this morning and we were –“

“There was no explanation available!” Mugman butted back in. “So we figured we’d–“

“Because you’d probably know what’s going on–“

“Boys, boys, simmer down,” Dice cut them off loudly. “Even if I wanted to solve this… mystery, as it were, I could never with the two of you causin’ such a ruckus.” The two traded glances, then thankfully held their tongues. “Alright then. Start at the beginning. Who knows, I might come out amused.”

“Well,” started Mugman. “Yesterday, Elder Kettle…” he trailed off, looking to the ground. Dice couldn’t help raising his eyebrows a little. 

“Did he now?” he muttered, wishing he had a cigarette within reach. He should have guessed, with Cuphead holding the old coot’s cane. The boys nodded. 

“So we… took care of all that, and we went to sleep that night. Then the next morning… we were just like this,” he finished abruptly. Dice put a couple of gloved fingers to his lips, hoping the pantomime of his usual habit would focus him at least a little by association. 

“Mm. So your pops is pushing up daisies… and you just wake up different,” he muttered, repeating what he’d been told. The two nodded. He hummed a little more, tossing the information around in his head, until a positively rich notion struck him and he couldn’t help but chuckle. 

“What is it?” Mugman asked. Dice struggled to stop snickering. 

“S…See now, boys, I don’t see why you’ve got a bone to pick. The Devil, he… why, he’s given you a gift, free of charge!” he exclaimed, now in the cycle of a raspy laugh. The brothers looked to each other with confusion. 

“I don’t know if I’d call it a gift, Dice…” Cuphead remarked awkwardly. 

“Ah, you don’t got any idea what you’re dealin’ with. It’s been a long while since I even thought of the old man’s terms, I musta notarized it twenty years ago…”

“The old man? You mean Elder Kettle?” Mugman implored. “But he didn’t make a contract, he just -“

“What, you think I didn’t file every damn deal the Devil’s ever made? Kettle still gave ‘im his name, agreed to the terms, that’s good enough. And there’s even more opportunity to sneak in little extra clauses, just for grins,” he added. 

“Why would you add clauses in for no reason?” Cuphead demanded indignantly. Dice put up his hands in pseudo-defense.

“Who said I did the adding? I did my job damn good and damn fast. All those details are the Devil’s handiwork, he loves messin’ with folks, no matter how inconvenient it makes things… long as I clean up the mess afterward… he don’t give a damn,” Dice explained. “Probably why he got this ball rolling, knowin’ you’d come to me…”

“So what do we do about it?” interrupted Mugman. Dice raised an eyebrow. 

“What d’you _want_ to do about it? Far as messin’ around goes, this is pretty damn tame. Go out and live, think of all you can do without your souls spillin’ outta your heads. Go for a swim, do all the handstands you want, smack into a wall an’ be amazed at bein’ alive afterward…”

The boys’ gazes went askew in thought, seeming conflicted. 

“Dice,” The boys and their former enemy snapped out of their reverie at Werner’s quiet call to attention. “You vouldn’t happen to know anyzing about zis, vould you?” He thrust a page of the newspaper at Dice, a technicolor mess of advertisements. Dice picked it up off the couch and scanned it nonchalantly, until one of the ads made him bite his lip to keep from flinching. 

_The Devil’s Casino: Back and better than ever, under new management!_

“I’ll be damned…” he hissed under his breath. 

“What? What is it?” Mugman asked. Cuphead’s grip tightened on the cane he was holding. 

“He’s back, isn’t he?”

Dice scowled and nodded. “Sure is. Fine day to do it too, right after your pops bit it…”

“Golly, you don’t think the Devil… has Elder Kettle, do you?” Mugman murmured, trembling. 

“Of course he does, mug-boy. That man wasn’t no saint, there ain’t no way his soul’s anywhere but hell! Gambled, drank, lied… he was in the war, too, no doubt he did some nasty stuff there…” Dice mused. 

“We’ve got to get him back!” Cuphead declared, rapping the cane against the floor. Werner jumped at the crack it made. 

“ _Junge_ , just because ze Devil has re-opened now does not mean he is offering your, ah, grandfather to you! It _is_ just over a year since you beat him ze first time, perhaps he is –“

“No,” Dice interrupted. “Devil’s an invalid when it comes to organization, but he’s damn near married to dramatic timing. He’s taunting you, no doubt about it…”

“So we _should_ go, there’s no doubt he’ll have Elder Kettle’s… soul hanging around, just to rub it in,” Cuphead muttered. “But we’ll get him back. And if we can’t, we’ll just have to beat that stupid Devil again!”

Mugman stared in concern. “Cuphead, I don’t –“

“Fine then. I’ll come along too,” Dice answered, getting off the couch for what felt like the first time in months. “I’d like to see this ‘new management’ of his.”

“Finally! Perhaps you vill find a house of your own and stay zere?” Werner asked half-sarcastically. 

“Don’t hold your breath, mister. The only house in my sights is the one the Devil kicked me out of. Come on, we can get to ‘im faster if we get there before the floor crowds up.” He finally spotted his cigarettes in the half-open end table drawer, and took them as he moved to the front door. 

“But Dice, won’t it be dangerous? The Devil was a tough fight, and you don’t… well, you don’t have the same power you used to,” Mugman pointed out nervously. 

Dice grinned, a very practiced expression the brothers were surely familiar with. “I thought you’d be smarter, bein’ given an actual brain an’ all. I may not be able to do my flashy card tricks, but I’ll never stop being me.” The brothers looked blankly, confused. Dice rolled his eyes and clarified. “If there’s one bloke the Devil would rather mess with for eternity than ice on sight… it’s yours truly.”

———

“What if he just ignores us?” Mugman asked, almost running to keep up with Dice’s long, purposeful strides. “He wasn’t on the floor when we first came in last time, and it seems that he almost never is no matter what…”

“Easy. You start winning. If this greenhorn manager is worth his flesh, that’ll get the Devil to you but quick,” Dice explained, annoyed at the irritation he could hear bleeding into his own voice. 

“You sure hate this whole ‘new manager’ thing, huh?” Cuphead asked. Dice tensed the muscles in his torso, they’d notice if his hands started shaking.

“Well, it’s a matter of efficiency,” he explained slowly, practically strangling his vocal cords to keep them from floundering. “I ran perhaps the tightest ship ever cosmically witnessed, no one ever stepped out of line and everything moved smooth and fast… even if the casino seemed chaotic and disorienting. It’s all by design, you see. What I’m saying is, this manager will have completely dismantled my system, rendering us unable to exploit it. There are just some things that… well, are just given.”

“… Well, it sounds to me like you’re just jealous,” Cuphead remarked after a pause. 

“We’re here, boys!” Dice announced loudly. 

“No we’re not,” Mugman corrected him. “We still have to cross the train tracks.”

“And aren’t the train tracks included in our — that is, the Devil’s — little operation?” he asked quizzically as they crossed with caution towards the mouth of the cave which housed their dreaded destination. “I do wonder who they got to replace that fanatical phantom and his cadaverous conductor…”

“Maybe the, uh, Head doesn’t need them anymore?” Mugman guessed. 

“I’d believe it. Like I said, Devil loves jerkin’ everyone’s chain, no matter how superfluous the setup may be.” The three walked up the steps to the cave’s entrance, on the gilded carpet that looked good as new, and not as if it pointed towards a recently toppled establishment. Dice went quiet, the newly restored floor covering giving him a thought. “Now boys, the sun’s still out an’ fierce, meaning it ain’t exactly rush hour in there, not yet. But casinos, ‘specially the Devil’s house, they’ve got a way of makin’ time stand still. A way of keepin’ you busy, and busy means distracted. You’ve been in there, you know what I mean, but with new management… well, let’s just say I was the rare case of putting quick business before watching someone lose a slot machine for five hours. The big man, on the other hand…”

The brothers nodded, like cheap bobbleheads. Whomever the Devil had appointed to replace Dice, it was entirely possible that he had far more authority over their management than before. Dice hoped, but doubted they entirely understood that notion. The three walked across the dark inside of the cave towards the outside entrance, which looked precisely as it had before, even when Dice himself laid eyes on it for the first time, many years ago. The larger-than-life statue of the Devil crouched atop the entrance leered down at them, as per usual, and Dice reflexively wrinkled his nose at its taunting eyes. 

The doors were unlocked, naturally, and Dice and the brothers let themselves in. What struck Dice immediately after they crossed the threshold was the music playing around them. He’d always made sure the casino’s ambience remained lively, loud, and a tad helter-skelter. It was enrapturing, enveloping, pushed the guests to match the reckless swing of the songs with equally reckless bets and agreements. But the tracks that met his ears upon entry were practically another genre entirely. The melody was closer to the smooth records he’d put on with his more tedious filing work after hours, and not even that feisty. Hell, it was practically –

“Classical?” Mugman asked aloud, at no one in particular. 

“…Yeah. Whoever this new manager is really gave the place a good shine,” Cuphead remarked. “Don’t even think they’ve got those freaky gambling doohickeys you threw at us working the place anymore.”

“Pshaw. The freshest manager alive wouldn’t touch those cretins with a ten-foot pole,” Dice grumbled distractedly, trying to cover up how much he was scrutinizing everything that crossed his line of sight. Not much had been done technically, everything was in the same place, but the sounds the machines made, the chatter of the many guests, even glasses clinking around, it all seemed muffled somehow. It looked and sounded for all the world like a distraction, an attempt to communicate that the building housed literally anything other than the Devil’s Casino. An attempt that might work to the uninitiated eye, were it not for the usual less-than-reputable patrons at the bar and around the tables. 

“Why, hello there, boys. You’re a little young to be gambling, aren’t you?”

Dice tensed, but not half as much as the brothers did. That voice, he’d heard it before, heard it rambling drunkenly after hours, heard it shouting haphazard encouragement at the races, heard it pleading for a change in its sentence, and heard it lament, choke, wishing it had somebody else to–

“Well, don’t just stand there looking sheepish. I’m not here to judge, at least not yet!” 

Cuphead struggled to un-freeze himself, a mess of vowels and syllables spilling out of his mouth. Mugman had a bit more luck, able to barely string together the name he connected with that face.

“E-E-Elder… K-Ket-Kettle…”

The apparent new manager laughed heartily, in a manner too jovial to epitomize the cesspool of corruption he would oversee. “Well, I wouldn’t say I’m quite over the hill yet, but I’m flattered you’re familiar with me!”

It was really him, in the flesh. Well, in the flesh the Devil made for him. His head was identical to the form he’d taken for years, but his body seemed to have been ripped directly from his personage before he’d ever set foot in the casino. He was almost as tall as Dice, and wore an olive-colored suit that was nearly identical to his former managerial attire. While the brothers were most likely speechless at the sight of their father figure in such a state to begin with, Dice was simply astounded by the Devil’s apparent lack of creativity. 

“Of-Of course we’re familiar with you!” Cuphead finally got out. “You’re our granddad!”

Kettle quirked an eyebrow. “Granddad? Well, wouldn’t that be a trip. I must admit it’s all a little fuzzy before this moment, but I can’t say I’ve ever seen you in my life! And what, would this dapper fella here be your father?”

“No, no, that’d be the real trip,” Dice responded quick, finally turning himself back on and flashing a cordial smile. “I’m jus’ here to look around, and to make sure these boys don’t do nothin’ rash. See, I used to run this joint,” he added, with very deliberate emphasis. 

“Is that right?” Kettle asked in faux amazement. “You must be that King Dice the Devil was going on about. Though I don’t suppose you’re much of a king anymore…” 

It was becoming impossible to hold in his vitriol. Dice funneled his mounting choler into his grin, as practiced. “And I don’t see you takin’ the name, mister –“

“Where’s the Devil?” Mugman interrupted. For once Dice was thankful for the whiny pissant and his “justice.” He had the feeling he was about to say something stupid before he was cut off. “How do we get to talking with him?” Kettle stroked his mustache thoughtfully. _At least make ‘em shoot some craps or run the slots ‘til the big man shows up…_

“Well, I reckon I could get him over here in a minute or three. Especially with his former manager here… the two of you must have a load to talk about!” 

_Yeah, the big load right in front of me._

“You folks just sit tight, maybe get a drink or two, and you know, there’s a roulette wheel right thataway… drinks are on your tab, don’t worry about having coin…” He strolled off with the rest of his sentence, leaving no more room for questioning. 

“I… Cuphead, you don’t think he’s really…” Mugman trailed off. 

“It’s him. The Devil wouldn’t appoint someone so… polite,” Cuphead muttered, turning to Dice for confirmation. 

“Damn straight. What a priss. Even back when I drank with ‘im he wasn’t that goody-goody,” Dice grumbled. “Devil must hate it too, he never liked Kettle, never got over how little he cared about his particular comeuppance…”

“Then why did he make him the…” Mugman trailed off. The brat couldn’t even say it. 

“Why do you think?” Cuphead retorted. “He musta known we’d come here somehow, and made sure Elder Kettle would never want to come back…”

“On the contrary!” All three turned fast to spot the Devil casually sauntering over, Kettle in tow. “I’m quite willing to cough up his soul… for a price, that is.”

“A soul for a soul?” Cuphead guessed angrily. 

“That tired setup?” Dice added without thinking. The Devil grinned his way. 

“Oh, Dice. Didn’t see you there. Usually it’s me coming out to see you, but it’s high time you paid me a visit, eh?” he laughed. 

“Least I ain’t thumbin’ my nose at ya through your cigar smoke!” Dice griped, doing much worse with handling himself than he thought he would. 

“Please, that ain’t your style. Much more like it to show up an’ size up my joint in real time. An’ I don’t see _you_ comin’ up with a better deal here,” he added, blowing a cloud of smoke at the three. 

“Well, _mister_ , you ain’t payin’ me to come up with better ideas no more!” Dice pointed out. 

“You know, you’ve got a point there. Kettle, what are we to do?” he asked the new manager. 

“Pardon?” he asked, confused. 

“These boys here, they want to get your soul outta Hell, they don’t like you runnin’ this joint. So what shall we throw at ‘em so they can earn it the honest way?” The Devil explained slowly. Cuphead snorted at his uncharacteristic calm and straightforwardness, but Kettle got to thinking. 

“Hmm. Well, have these fellas ever been down in Hell before?” he asked. The Devil shook his head, a bemused expression on his face. “Then I think they should give it a whirl! See if anyone’s worth saving from it to begin with. It’s quite dangerous, you know, each level more treacherous than the last…”

“Hell doesn’t come in levels,” Dice huffed. As far as he knew, and he knew quite a bit, Hell was just countless drudging miles of fire and ash. 

“Well, it does now!” the Devil cackled. “Levels! What an idea! I’d give ya a promotion if I could, Kettle!” He took an aggressive drag of his cigarette. “So you fellas, you make it through all… uh…” he turned to Kettle questioningly. 

“Nine,” he elaborated quietly. 

“All nine levels of Hell in one piece. Which should be a mite bit easier for you little brats this time around!” he added with a sneer at the cups, who looked none too pleased with the jab. “You make it out, I’ll let Kettle loose to the wind. But if you get thrashed too hard... you join my staff, same as him. And Dice, I’ll have to think up something particularly dastardly for you. I wanna enjoy givin’ you your due.”

“An’ why am I in this?! I don’t give a damn about their granddad!” Dice protested. 

“My enjoyment starts now,” the Devil explained simply. “Good luck, boys.”

He snapped his fingers, and without warning the floor of the casino seemed to open up and swallow the brothers and Dice whole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yep, this is gonna be a bit of a dante's inferno thing. i don't believe i've seen anyone do anything quite like this yet, and as you may know my modus operandi is going where no amount of silly has gone before. and hmm, how will this be made fresh and new and most importantly ridiculous? well, there are nine circles... and nine very minor antagonists i've conveniently left alone up to this point...
> 
> see you in a week or two. have a lovely day! :)
> 
> P.S. i've officially got art up for the brothers post-Devil shenanigans on my DA, if you wanna know what they look like, as well as some aggressive sketches of Dice, Devil and Kettle. check it out!


	3. Minos's Claw Machine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> our heroes get roasted by a short guy in silly clothing.
> 
> so here we are, our first hyper-trippy chapter. it only gets weirder from here, and probably more satirical too. as far as i can find, chimes has zero character (aside from the wiki claiming he has "self-destructive tendencies") so i thought it would be funny to have him just steal everyone else's character. but enough about that, on with the story!

_He didn’t even give us that much of a choice…_

Mugman felt sore. And woozy. And _his head was on the ground no don’t spill –_

It took until he frantically sat up and jumped to his feet that he remembered why he didn’t need to worry about that anymore. He clapped a hand to his head and neurotically pulled at his hair, still unused to having a completely closed skull, with muscles and hair and a brain under it. Mugman shuddered at the freaky image he’d inadvertently caused to pop up in his mind and decided to focus on picking his hat up off the strangely warm, gravelly floor and putting it back on his head. At least with a cap on he could pretend there was a more familiar porcelain basin under it. 

“...He din’t hafta drop us fifty thousand feet…” Mugman looked about five feet over to see his brother lying on his stomach, voice muffled in the reddish gravel.

“Doesn’t it bother you to be tipped over– er, lying down like that?” Mugman asked. Cuphead sluggishly rolled over onto his back, bits of gravel stuck to his slightly scuffed-up face. 

“You heard the man. Lot easier for us to make it out in one piece.” Mugman watched with confusion as Cuphead put an arm under his head, and irritably spat out bits of gravel and sand that had made their way into his mouth. He hadn’t expected Cuphead to get used to their form change so quickly. _I guess I shouldn’t be surprised…_

“Get up, cupface. This is one of nine big ol’ time wasters, and damn if we ain’t wasting time already.” Dice, though a little bruised himself, had gotten up fast and was already lighting a cigarette.

Cuphead finally sat up. “My face ain’t a cup anymore,” he pointed out dully. “What, you gonna call me human-face now?”

“It’ll be babyface if you don’t get off your lazy caboose,” the former manager returned, rolling his joint to the edge of his mouth quizzically. Cuphead scoffed shortly and pushed himself to his feet, snatching up his hat as Mugman had. “Now, I hope one of you boys knows what that blasted tea kettle was shrieking on about.”

“What, the nine levels of Hell?” Mugman asked. “Elder Kettle used to tell us little bits from a book about it sometimes. You’ve never read it?”

“Why would I have the time to read some stuffy old book?” Dice argued smoothly.

“Because you worked for the Devil, who runs Hell?” Cuphead retorted, quirking an eyebrow. Mugman’s bewilderment continued; he hadn’t even figured out what eyebrows were for. 

“Like I said, Hell don’t come in levels,” Dice explained. “An’ I didn’t even work with Hell. Devil gave me the casino and the casino only.”

“So what you’re saying is, you ain’t on top of this situation?” Cuphead suggested coyly. Dice’s teeth clenched tightly around his cigarette, and Mugman wanted to stop Cuphead from saying anything else. Just because they couldn’t be shattered anymore didn’t mean they couldn’t be broken.

“W-Well, I do kinda remember how the story goes, least, I know where we are!” Mugman butted in, stepping between the two hastily. “This is the first level. The levels get… uh, worse the lower you get, so whoever the Devil set up to fight us won’t be so bad! In fact, we might skip some levels!”

“Skip some?” Cuphead repeated, confused.

“It depends. Depends on… how bad we’ve been,” Mugman tried to elaborate, wracking his brain for any lingering memories of Elder Kettle’s more uncommon Hell-related stories.

“In that case, we’ll be outta this dump in no time,” Dice quipped flatly. “So where do we find this ‘whoever’, mister bookworm?”

“I… um… there’s a river over there,” Mugman pointed out, gesturing to a small, viscous-looking stream. “We should follow it?”

“Well, since you sound so sure,” Dice replied sarcastically, nevertheless following Mugman’s finger. As the three grew closer to the riverbank and began following it upward, they could make out small, colorful objects floating through the water, mostly submerged and soaked through. 

“Looks like a bunch of toys,” Cuphead remarked. “They have those in the book?”

“No…” murmured Mugman. “I wonder what sort of… people the Devil would put in our way.”

He heard Dice grunt thoughtfully at that query, and as he watched the man smoke Mugman caught a slight green glint in his eyes as they widened and narrowed in a kind of painful realization. 

“Goddamnit… him and his poetic justice…” he muttered darkly. 

“What? What’s that supposed to mean?” Cuphead implored. Dice took out his cigarette and tossed it into the river. It hissed loudly on contact with the water’s surface. 

“There’s nine of these things,” was all he said, sounding like he was trying very hard to hold back a groan.

Mugman was just starting to put together what he meant when his train of thought was interrupted. 

“There’s nine of these things!”

It sounded like Dice had repeated what he said. It was his voice, but it sounded so weirdly distant, like it was coming from above them. Cuphead seemed to hear it too, and looked up in confusion. “Dice, was that you?”

“Dice, was that you?”

Dice exhaled hard, apparently set to bursting with annoyance, and put on a stiff grin. “Show your ugly mug, Chimes.”

“Show your – ah, seems I’m dealin’ with a hotshot or two.” All of a sudden, the three were brought to a halt by a small man seemingly falling right out of the sky and onto his face in front of them. He smoothly got to his feet, and immediately struck a pose to imply that such an entrance was something he’d intended. Now that they could see him, Mugs instantly recognized him by his getup. 

“You’re that claw machine monkey!” Cuphead exclaimed, taking Mugman’s words out of his mouth. The man put his hands on his hips and leaned forward, in a stance akin to Cuphead’s. 

“Hey, I don’t hafta take that lying down, the big man gave me a nice, respectable form this time around,” he retorted, in a voice and mannerism exactly like that of Mugman’s brother. 

“Respectable is pushing it,” Dice quipped, referring to the strange man’s small stature and oversized cymbals. “By the looks of it, he didn’t change a thing.”

“Wait, wait a minute,” Mugman butted in. “Why are you copying us like that, mister…”

“Oh, I’m real sorry. Name’s Mr. Chimes, not sure you’d know that, what with my… not-great status back when I was working at the casino…” he rambled, now mimicking Mugman’s meek personage to a T. “See, I’ve never really qualified to have a… self, you might say. I mean, I suppose I’m the ‘claw machine’ guy, but –“

“Don’t bother, he ain’t gonna answer your question. Answer is, he’s just a pain in the neck,” Dice interrupted. 

“Well, I’d give ya a fine answer, if ya let me talk for a damn minute!” Chimes snapped, back to Dice. 

“So you run the first level,” Cuphead guessed. “And those other weirdos run the other levels?”

“Yup! I run the place. And, uh, I’m pretty sure the other fellas are around here somewhere, not that I’d ever wanna see those bozos again,” he added with a childish annoyance. 

“Well, we need to get through all the levels,” Mugman explained. “You’re not here to stop us, are you?”

“Well, I don’t think so…” Chimes trailed off, putting a finger to his chin and rocking back on his heels. 

“Heh, he’s got you down pat, mug-boy,” Dice snickered. “What a pansy.”

“Them’s fightin’ words, mister _King_ Dice!” Chimes rasped, before taking a cocky stance. “Though I suppose… you ain’t a king no more.”

“Shut up, Chimes. Show us the exit and get outta my sight,” Dice ordered, and even with his thick tinted eyewear, Mugman could see a lingering bit of fear in the short man’s face. 

“Please,” the former cup added, hoping that Chimes would at least be inclined to snap back into “agreeable Mugman” mode. 

“Well, all right, folks. We’re almost there, anyway.” 

After rounding a bend in the river, it looked like “there” entailed a large, glass castle-looking structure. A large metal claw descended behind the glass and seized on an amorphous, squirming whiteish figure. As it began to rise with… what Mugman presumed was a soul caught in its claws, the soul-thing in question writhed violently as it appeared to slowly turn a dull, ashen color. The claw rose out of sight, and after a moment Chimes crashed his cymbals hard, making everyone in the group jump (including him, of course).

“Oh, jeez. That guy was bound for fraud, but I think I dropped him in greed…” the mimic muttered sheepishly. “I suppose it’s a little ironic, but I’ve never been the best with a claw machine…”

“Souls are judged and transported by _claw machine?_ ” Dice inquired incredulously. “Surely that ain’t all that accurate. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Guess you shouldn’t,” Chimes parroted back to him, walking further across the large, vaulted cave the claw machine castle thing occupied. “After all, you’d know me far better than these two would, and all ‘a my implied incompetence.”

“Implied?” asked Mugman, confused. Chimes nodded innocently. 

“Yes, Dice and I have… a bit of a history, though, well, I suppose no more history than he has with all the others…”

“What history?” Cuphead asked, overeager as always. 

“Well, if you’d stop interrupting me! S’none of your business, anyway. You’re just some kid,” Chimes pointed out. 

“Yeah, some kid who saved twenty-something souls from damnation!” Cuphead retorted self-importantly. An eyebrow shot up from behind Chimes’s thick goggles. 

“Saved, huh? Sure you did. After you _beat us within an inch of our lives,_ ” he transitioned, slipping into a perfect impression of Psy’s voice. “ _Took away our only pride,_ ” he added, shifting between Cagney and the Baroness, “ _and threw us back to rock bottom!_ ” he finished in Rumor’s low, fluting tenor, making Mugman shudder. Before an uncomfortable silence had the chance to settle in, Chimes shattered it with a loud, whooping cackle, which for once sounded like his own voice, before going back to Cuphead. “Oh man, you can’t put a price on those faces! Hey, don’t worry about it! You already figured that part out, those jokers love ya to pieces now! Your wacky old man, on the other hand…” he trailed off, examining a tall, shiny door, which looked to be without any knobs or hinges on the sides. The whole thing really was just a claw machine with castle-like metal spires hugging the glass box. There was even a coin-op slot and button to the right of the door, though it didn’t look like it served any purpose. 

“All, right, if you guys want out, here’s your best bet,” he explained shortly. 

“You’re just gonna let us go?” asked Mugman. 

“Don’t ask questions, I’ll start wondering if I’m doing the right thing!” Chimes pouted, running the edges of his cymbals along each other uncertainly. 

“Yes, he’s just gonna let us go,” Dice answered for him, rolling his eyes. “Quit chattin’ him up, you’re only makin’ this song an’ dance go on longer.”

“Is that really the only way out?” asked Cuphead. “We really have to get in there with all those weird squirmy things, and –“

“Ah, quit shakin’ in your boots! Didn’t you fight the Devil himself? And yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s the only way. Devil didn’t give me… much instruction… or, uh, any instruction…”

“That’s not fair,” Mugman remarked. He couldn’t help wondering why Chimes was even there to begin with. “He never even talked to you about this job?”

“No, and I don’t really mind… I guess… I am in Hell, after all, he can do what he likes with me…”

“Is that right?” Dice asked with a grin, enunciating very deliberately. 

“Oh sure, it’s peachy keen! I ask ‘im for one favor an’ he hustles me, I burn in Hell for god knows how long, an’ then when he finally takes the heat off my ass he puts me in a godforsaken toy monkey of all things, an’ then _you_ little drips knock all the nuts an’ bolts outta me, and whaddya know, it’s back to the hot coals, et cetera et cetera. So you know, I’m doing just _fine_ where I am, matter of fact I’ve never. Been. Better.” 

Cuphead and Mugman stared, and the latter was more confused than anything else. If Chimes was still mimicking Dice, it was no side of him that Mugman had ever seen. He could easily imagine it, bubbling beneath the film of the man’s tight grins, but couldn’t recall having ever seen it surface. Whatever Chimes meant by the impression evidently had the desired effect, however. Dice looked fit to burst, and Chimes’s wide mouth was twitching up into a grin. 

“Why, I never meant any harm by –“

“Get us in that machine, won’t you, mister Chimes? Before I crack those silly specs of yours with those cymbals,” interrupted Dice smoothly, his words practically in liquid form. Chimes laughed again, that same dissonant yet natural-sounding chortle. 

“Whatever ya say, you the boss!” he exclaimed back, now doing a completely different, younger-sounding voice that still had the same flair as Dice’s. This seemed a well-founded hunch on Mugman’s part, as Dice physically attempted to seize the small man’s cymbals before the latter nimbly leapt out of the way, slotting his cymbals into the crevice forming the top of the door-thing. 

“All right, stand back folks!” he called, back to his original Dice voice. Chimes kicked off the wall, and the massive metal plate came swinging downward, caught on his cymbals. He pinned it to the rocky ground, and Cuphead started into the square void of an entrance. 

“How do we know this isn’t a trick of some kind?” Mugman asked, trying to sound as polite as he could. Chimes looked up at him innocently, Mugman’s face reflecting in his dark glasses. 

“You don’t think the Devil would want a good show?” he asked rhetorically, cocking his head to the side. “To be honest… I’m pretty sure I’m the only one on the staff who wouldn’t try to kill you on sight…”

“Well, that’s reassuring,” Cuphead muttered. “And why are they killing us on sight, besides the obvious?”

“What do you care?” Chimes returned. The question rendered Cuphead and Mugman speechless, and the most annoying part was that Mugman couldn’t put his finger on why. “You’re tryin’ to get back to the Devil, back to your Inkwell Isle, and hopefully get your pops out of his funk. What do we have to do with that whole mess?”

“Well, we would want to help you!” Mugman answered. “We helped out the Isle, after all, and –“

“They were debtors, though,” Chimes murmured. “We’re already down for the count. Golly, I dunno how many years it’s been…”

“Maybe the Devil’s just convinced you that’s the case! After all, you’ve been out of Hell before, albeit due to him, so maybe we could –“

“Jeez, you wanna liberate the big man from himself too?” Dice interrupted, marching towards the machine’s entrance impatiently. “I figured you wouldn’t be dilly-dallying as much with your grandad’s soul on the line.”

“Yeah, get a move on ‘fore I decide I do wanna pick a fight!” Chimes griped. “You little drips are too sentimental for your own good.”

“But are you going to be okay?” asked Mugman, hesitantly stepping onto the lowered door. 

“Okay? No, I don’t think so. I’m not sure I can be anything, if I’m being honest,” he answered meekly. 

“Why’s that?” Cuphead asked snarkily. Chimes looked up with a face-splitting grin on his face. 

“‘Cause I’m pushin’ up daisies, stupid!” he hollered, stepping off of the metal plate and forcing it back shut, with Dice and the brothers still on it. Mugman couldn’t help but scream out of instinct, but as he hit the floor with a soft thud he felt a wave of relief. Perhaps the first moment he was wholly thankful for his form being different. 

“Mugs, you scaredy-cat,” Cuphead’s voice came laughing from the darkness. 

“I am not! You should be just as scared!” Mugman retorted. A hand clamped on his shoulder and Cuphead’s voice was suddenly a lot closer to him. 

“You’re not what?” he asked, sounding confused. 

“A scaredy-cat! Don’t pretend you didn’t say anything!” 

“Er… I didn’t… won’t argue, though,” he chuckled. 

“That worthless little fiend is still playing tricks on us,” Dice griped. “Just as well. Let’s get on with it.”

As their feet began clacking along the metal floor and then up a rounded incline, Mugman suddenly felt like there were many more people besides Dice and his brother nearby. He felt numerous… somethings brush past him, all strangely cold, and eventually shivered as the coldness went all throughout him. He didn’t know where Cuphead and Dice were, he couldn’t hear them anymore. It was then that he realized he couldn’t hear himself, either, and he was only getting colder. He was starting to panic, he was lost in the machine, surrounded by those souls he’d seen earlier, and for one moment he truly believed that they wouldn’t make it any farther. 

But apparently Chimes’s statement that the Devil wanted a good show was true, and soon Mugman was met with a surprisingly warm curve of metal. It lifted him away from the coldness of the machine’s insides, and after a few more seconds he could see the surrounding reddish landscape once again, albeit now through glass. 

“Mugs, your stupid hat-card is poking my eye out…” Mugman made a noise as he realized that Cuphead had been shoved right up against him by the three-pronged claw. Dice was the same amount of uncomfortably close as well, but he had apparently been picked up upside-down. 

“That damn monkey thinks he’s such a comedian,” he grumbled. “Don’t care if the Devil changed ‘im human, he’s just as much of an uncouth layabout…”

“Well, at least he’s taking us past everything!” Mugman reminded him. “That’ll save us a lot of trouble!”

“I’ll say. Hate to meet the folks who’re worse ‘n him,” mumbled Cuphead, trying to get his arm unpinned from behind his back. The claw pulled up into a dark, craggy hole, presumably the exit to the rest of Hell’s levels. Darkness closed in around them once again, and Mugman began to get comfortable with the smooth pace they were rising at, and with the presumably long ascension ahead of them.

But suddenly the claw jerked to a stop, and Mugman’s stomach did a quick backflip. From far below them, a raspy, Dice-like voice echoed upward:

“Ah, the silly thing jammed! Oh, well! You boys can handle level two an’ on, can’tcha?”

The claw opened, and Mugman yelped as he began plunging downward along with his brother and their former enemy. As wind began whipping around them and the air began to grow distinctly humid, the cup began to figure out one thing for sure: as long as Dice was with them, none of the former staff members running the levels of Hell were to be trusted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much for reading! let me know if you want to see more of this. currently it updates once every other week, but with the proper amount of hype this could change ;)


	4. Old Flame, Cold Table

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A cold table is a gambling term for a game on a losing streak and/or under the house's control, and I think we all know what an old flame is.

_Why the hell did we let Dice come along…_

Cuphead mused this amongst other more profane thoughts as he held his hat to his head, still falling from… wherever they’d been when they’d been unceremoniously dropped by someone that in all honesty, he could barely remember fighting. It’d sounded like the same story on Chimes’s end, too, making Cuphead wonder if this whole “journey through Hell” was even meant for them to take. Sure, it was their grandad they were looking to free, but it was hard to believe that the Devil had repurposed the old casino staff to taunt the brothers, and not –

“AAAAAGHHH!” Cuphead shouted, suddenly realizing that the ground was rushing up to meet him. Even with a sturdier form he wouldn’t be surviving that fall, and so Cuphead quickly activated the super art he and Mugman had equipped before leaving that morning. A golden aura enveloped his body just in time for him to smack face-first onto a hard wooden surface. Mugman came crashing down right next to him, thankfully having the same thought Cuphead did to keep himself from injury. Dice, on other hand, did not fall but floated gently to the ground, looking none too pleased at that turn of events. 

“Well, now I know he’s out for a laugh,” he muttered, feet touching the wood with a soft _thunk._ “Hell shouldn’t be so friendly. So, boy, what’s this level supposed to –“ he cut himself off as the wood shifted under their feet, and the speed of its movement increased until balance became impossible. 

“It’s spinning?” Mugman guessed distractedly, wobbling back and falling on his behind. He quickly slid away as the motion continued and in his instinctual rush to help Cuphead’s foot lost purchase of the surface under it. His right cheek smacked the wood and he slid off into a direction he could hardly comprehend, what with how dizzy he was getting. Mugman was right, whatever they were on was rotating. 

Eventually the slanted surface led to a steep drop, and Cuphead fell about a foot or two into a small basin-thing. The spinning slowed and Cuphead re-adjusted his hat, sloppily shifting his weight to stay upright like when the train started before he sat down. Looking where he came got him nowhere, there was just empty darkness beyond the wooden slant, but the other way showed another hill-like slant, decorated with a very familiar patterns of colors…

“Cuphead?” Mugman’s voice sounded a little far away, and as Cuphead looked for the source of his voice he caught sight of his brother’s cap in another basin-thing, a little ways away from where he was. 

“Yeah, I’m here. You alright?” he called. 

“Cuphead, I think we fell in a big… roulette wheel…” Mugman trailed off, likely trying to remember who they’d fought that had –

“Oh, yes, that is the first thing you notice, isn’t it?”

A new voice, an accented one, broke around them. It was loud, but not deafening. More of an echo than a rumble. 

“Well, it’s kind of hard to miss it,” Cuphead retorted, not quite sure where he should be retorting to. 

“See, you don’t even notice who you are up against, this thing you’ve connected me with clouds your perception…”

“Maybe if you were as big as the wheel…” Cuphead suggested jokingly. 

“Cuphead, look! Up there!” Mugman exclaimed, pointing towards the top of the wheel. Standing far above them, frozen in a delicate, poised stance, was a tall, slight woman in a wide-skirted ballet costume the same colors as the wheel she stood atop. He recognized her, vaguely, she was another of the casino staff they had fought, but…

“Oh, well, we can’t connect you with much else, we don’t even know what your name is!” Cuphead pointed out, voicing his inability to recall anything of the sort. 

“…Hmph. Does not quite surprise me, I suppose… I cannot even recall my true name…”

“No one can, toots, that’s how contracts work.” Dice had just gotten his bearings, and stood up disgruntled about two dishes down from Cuphead. The ballerina sharply yet gracefully turned her head to face him. 

“Dice. What an unpleasant surprise. An expected one, nonetheless, but… ah! I remember the silly name that brute bestowed on me,” she exclaimed, though even her breathy exclamation seemed faraway and graceful, unreachable. “It was… Pirouletta, if my decaying memory serves.”

“… That’s a silly name?” Mugman asked, confused. 

“You think your names are any kinda normal, boys?” Dice pointed out. “You ever conceive what your little pals called themselves before signin’ their souls away?”

“Dice, I have heard quite enough from you,” Pirouletta interrupted from above. “For a long time, I have. And I might say, it feels as if I have been taken to heaven… when I know that I do not have to call your fraudulent visage ‘king’,” she proclaimed, her accented voice raising a little at the end. She put out her left foot and lifted up a little on her right, leveled her arms out to either side, and spun on point. After a moment the wheel lurched into motion, throwing its occupants against the left sides of their respective cups. A loud thunk indicated that a ball had been dropped onto the slanted rim of the wheel, and Cuphead was willing to bet it was to scale. There was nothing around to parry, so as was usual for a game of roulette, he only had his luck to rely on. 

“I spun for you for many years,” her voice echoed. The wheel’s spin had stirred up a loud and mighty gust of wind, but she was still very much audible. “Twirled under your thumb as you refused to allow me any other role.”

The wheel began to slow down, and Cuphead stomach started turning. He could just crouch in the corner of the cup and not get hit, couldn’t he?

“Who am I? Who was I? You don’t even remember. You had no space to remember, filling out your mind with the Devil’s empty words…”

“Ain’t like you didn’t do just that,” Dice shouted over the wind, hands gripping the wall of the cup he was in. The wheel slowed down exponentially, and somewhere off in the dark Cuphead heard a loud _plunk_ and realized the ball had landed. 

“And why did I do just that?” she asked rhetorically. 

“Wait, were you guys…” Mugman butted in, going for distraction. Not a bad idea, Cuphead was on the verge of losing his lunch from the last spin. 

“This isn’t your business, child,” scoffed Pirouletta.

“It sure is, lady! We ain’t here for no reason, you know!” Cuphead retorted. If there was one thing he hated, it was adults being dismissive.

“Hm. Perhaps, then, that reason is not a very good one. I did not offer myself back up to do the Devil’s work to get revenge on a naive pair of children born from another’s foolishness.”

“Naive? And what’re you trying to saying about our –”

“Oh, you talk and you talk, but you don’t say anything! You’re just as bad as he is.” She went into another spin, and Cuphead’s returning gripe was lost to the wind.

“Cuphead!” Mugman yelled, holding his hat to his head. “We need to find the exit so we can get to the next level!” Cuphead stared, then looked around quizzically as his hair whipped his face relentlessly. 

“And where do you reckon that would be?” he returned sarcastically. “Can barely call this a level, it’s nothing but empty space and a big, dumb wheel!”

“Then it’s somewhere on the wheel! Try to find it, or at least think of where it could be! I don’t know what it’ll look like, but –”

“Mugs, look out!” Cuphead cried. Neither of them had noticed the wheel starting to slow down again, and now the large white ball was careening towards the cup that Mugman had fallen into. Thankfully it was a little smaller than he’d envisioned, and his brother avoided it by leaping to the edge of the cup. It rolled to a rest in his direction, and after dodging it once more he was safe, for the moment. “Well, we know the exit isn’t in the ball, at least,” Mugman joked nervously.

“Tch, why will you not die?” The wheel started up again as quickly as it had stopped. 

“Come on, Pira, no one no-how could beat me before, what makes you think you can here, far after your story ended?” Dice laughed. The ballerina’s brow furrowed in annoyance. 

“Because your story has ended as well. It seems that we are both simply refusing to believe in our demises.”

“Maybe you fellas could talk about that?” Cuphead asked, seizing on any means of stalling he could. The ball plunked into the pocket next to him. “Sounds like a pretty, uh, riveting thing to connect on.”

“Child, do you understand how long he has deceived me, time and time again, until I am reduced to playing the Devil’s game over and over, until it and myself become one and the same?” Pirouletta demanded. “You cannot even conceive a picture of the world as it was before you were forcibly brought into it.”

“Sure I can! Ain’t like I like what I see, but I look anyway!” Cuphead argued. “The Isle wasn’t always this bonkers, with folks selling their souls to become whatever! Everyone was living normal lives, but they were unhappy, or they wanted something. My grandad knew ‘em all, ‘til there wasn’t anyone left for him to talk to. So yeah, maybe Elder Kettle wasn’t thinking straight, but why in the hell should that matter? Mugs and I fixed up the Isle as best we could, and we might not‘ve made the best decisions, but Kettle’s deal made everyone happy again, eventually…”

Pirouletta’s arms dropped a little, and she sighed quietly. “You had a choice,” she muttered. “You were not your own downfall.”

“Cuphead!” Mugman whispered. “I think I know where the exit is!”

“Whaddya mean?” asked Cuphead. “We lost that bet…”

“I mean with your very lives. It is easy to distance yourself from a mistake if you did not make it,” she explained, looking herself up and down. “It is my mistake that I do not actually look this way anymore. I don’t think I look like much of anything, now…”

“The Devil’s Hell is flipped!” Mugman explained in frantic whispers. “It goes up instead of down! The exit’s where she is! It’s on top of the wheel!” Cuphead nodded distractedly, and Mugman started climbing inward, up the shallow incline towards the turret at the center. 

“And I would not have made my mistakes if it was not for _him,_ ” she hissed. “But they are my mistakes all the same. Still. It was his mistake to dare show his smug visage before me again.” She went back into a spin, and Mugman gripped the upper bearing for dear life, having made it to the middle just in time. 

“You respected me!” Dice shouted. “You saw who I made myself out to be and became one of my best!”

“Do not pretend any of us were your best. We were tools, instruments, that’s what we were made into. The only reason it was us was because of what you did. And the only reason you kept us was to grind us into nothing.”

“Wait, what did he do?” Cuphead questioned. “Besides just… not be a nice boss.” Mugman had started climbing the turret, and Cuphead didn’t want Pirouletta to notice any time soon. Besides, he wanted to hear where she was going. Dice had always remained more or less silent on his relations with his staff, and here seemed to be Cuphead’s chance to learn why precisely that was. 

“What did he do? _What did he do?_ What didn’t he do is a better question. For over ten individuals to all want for the most extreme revenge, I have always been surprised that the Devil did not send him to Hell immediately. Him and his softness for the young and malicious…”

“Pira, I can scarcely remember where all this hullabaloo first took off,” Dice interrupted, too briskly to sound as nonchalant as he likely wanted. “I don’t reckon you’re in the best shape to tell it.”

“Really, now? That’s interesting. Because I could recite my entire, cursed involvement with you and your horrible ways _moment by moment_ ,” she retorted through clenched teeth, her thin arms tensing with irritation. 

“I made it!” Mugman called out, throwing himself on top of the turret. Pirouletta jumped at his sudden presence, and gasped sharply as she teetered on the edge of the small platform. Despite Mugman’s efforts to stop her, the ballerina fell from her de facto stage, landing squarely on top of the man she had been berating no less than thirty seconds ago. 

“Can’t quit me, can ya?” he muttered, chuckling. Pirouletta gritted her teeth and, without hesitation, smacked Dice squarely across the face. To make matters more confusing, she then furiously grabbed him by his lapels and mashed her lips onto his. Cuphead reflexively retched. He didn’t get the whole deal with romance. He thought women were pretty, sure, but he didn’t like the idea of putting his mouth on them. And come to think of it, he was fairly certain women either kissed _or_ smacked men, not both. 

“Get me out of here, Dice, or I will haunt you every waking moment of your decaying, miserable existence,” she demanded as she stood back up. “Your face… isn’t so insufferable when it doesn’t look like a cube with chicken pox, you know.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re a real number too,” Dice groaned. She scoffed at him once more before kicking into one last spin, this one taking her up and away into the level’s seemingly ever-reaching void. “Good riddance,” the former manager grumbled, climbing out of the pocket he was in. “What a crazy broad.”

Cuphead had nothing to say to that, and after a while him and Dice finally made it up to where Mugman was. “So this is the exit?” Cuphead asked, nonplussed. The platform was smooth and shiny under his feet, but otherwise held nothing of note, not even any strange carvings. 

“I guess so. It should take us to the –“ Before his brother could finish, a bright light shined beneath the three, and Cuphead’s stomach flipped again as the void and the wheel in it disappeared around them. The light dissipated as soon as it had appeared, and they found themselves standing in a close, humid, and quite foul-smelling place. 

“So what was that level, smart boy?” Dice asked, rubbing at what was sure to become a mark on his left cheek. 

“Oh, uh, the level with the dancing lady?” said Mugman. “That was Lust.”

“Aha, yeah, that it was, kid,” Dice replied with a surprisingly weak chuckle. “Guess there was no pawn better for the job…”

“And where’re we now?” groaned Cuphead. “It smells like sour grapes and sweat in here.”

“Hmm… I can’t quite remember. Something to do with indulgence,” Mugs admitted. “Doesn’t matter, I guess. Depending on who we’re up against, we’ll find out soon enough.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a short one this time around, but we are beginning to learn some things. Has this implied strife amongst the casino staff been going on for longer than we thought? What the heck even is Dice's love life? Next chapter will be a bit longer and more introspective, but for now we've got plenty of motion sickness and mixed signals for everyone! Thanks for reading, and have a lovely day ^_^


	5. Plastered Past

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which we see the effects of alcohol on our not-so-noble heroes! in all seriousness, this is where the backstory kicks up, so strap in.

_You hear about that Russian deb-yuh-tahnt that rode in the other day?_

_Can’t say I did, pally._

_She’s a young’un, really, an’ a dancer, I thinks._

_Think? You don’t think, you drink._

_Sho’ do. But here now, I heard *hic* it’s too dangerous in that big ol’ northern hunk a’ land. Her pop’s some richie, an’ –_

“It feels… kind of alive, wouldn’t you say?”

Dice shook himself out of his reverie. “What, the walls?”

“Yeah, they’re all… pulsating, like someone’s insides,” Cuphead explained, curling his fingers to demonstrate. “Not to mention this gross sludge on the ground. It keeps getting deeper…”

Dice flinched involuntarily as he realized that his good shoes had been submerged in the chunky, stinking liquid for some time. “Hm. Hope we won’t be spending too long in here.”

“I don’t know about that…” Mugman muttered. “These tunnels look like they go on forever.” He was looking even more wimpy than usual, glancing around at the walls like they were about to squash closed around them at any moment. 

“You afraid of tight squeezes, kid?” Dice asked tauntingly. Mugman seemed to not pick up on his ridiculing tone at all. 

“Yeah, a little, I guess,” he admitted. “Just… I think I got locked in the cupboard under the sink once…”

“Oh, yeah, I remember that!” Cuphead laughed. “Me an’ – Elder Kettle an’ I were out that day. How in the hell did you lock yourself in there, anyway?”

“I don’t remember!” the former cup’s brother pouted. “I just remember how awfully dark and wet it was, and how scared I was that I would crack on accident!”

_So, this dancer-girl putting on a show, or is it just some fancy shmancy hobby that only moneybags have time to do?_

_Latter, I thinks. Her folks ain’t *urp* been super talky ‘bout what’s happenin’._

_Then where did you get this information? Bottom of your shot glass?_

_Hey, you should be cut off for shots by now. Gimme._

_Heh hyeh, nossir. Ya gots the drink, what *hic* more couldya want?_

_The glass that I paid the damn glass blower for a month ago, after you broke all my old set._

_Ah, hyeah, thas one good barfight, thas._

Something was sticking to Dice’s shoe. He couldn’t move it from the ground. After letting a brief curse fly under his breath he stooped down to assess the situation and found a hardened, crystal-like formation of…

“Glass,” he muttered, kicking at the odd formation until it shattered with a faint tinkle. 

“Hm?” asked Mugman. 

“There was glass hardening on my shoe.”

“Oh, yeah, it started mixing in with the usual sludge a while back,” Cuphead explained. “You didn’t notice?”

Dice didn’t answer that. He just took care to avoid the bubbling patches of clear, oil-like liquid running through the sewage-like stream, which he could feel soaking into his socks now. The air was thick and humid, adding to the overall pressured feeling of the fleshy tunnels, and it wasn’t any kind of humid Dice had ever felt. If he put out his tongue the air tasted sour, and then his throat started feeling sour too, burning until his head was burning too. 

“I’m getting a little dizzy,” muttered Mugman, hesitantly putting a hand against the slimy wall to steady himself. “The tunnels are… multiplying…”

_There ain’t no good barfight, not as long as my bar gets knocked up. Now gimme the glass, I ain’t gonna ask again._

_Heya, hey, theren’t no needa break out ya twin brotha, jes’ gimme minute’a… heyyy, no fair, five ‘gainst one…_

_Do you want me to douse ‘im, sir?_

_Go ‘head, I ain’t gonna help ‘im stumble home._

“There’s booze in the air,” Dice said in realization, yanking his foot free of another puddle of hardening glass-sludge. “The humidity, that’s why the air’s so funny.”

“What?! Is that why there’s three tunnels in front’ve me, all’va suh… sudden?” Mugman rambled. “Elder Kettle’d… kill us if he knew we were’s… drinnnkinnng…” he slumped forward and Cuphead rushed to catch him before he faceplanted in the sludge, and his face was crystalized or something. Dice found himself curiously picturing what that would look like.

“It ain’t technically drinking, Mugs,” Cuphead reminded him slowly, heaving his brother’s arm over his shoulder. “Didn’t know you were such a lightweight, though…” He looked back at Dice quizzically. “You wanna carry him? Probably be outta here faster.” 

The former manager wrinkled his nose at the questionable stains on the boy’s shirt, as well as the less-than-appetizing color taking up his face. “Pass, kid,” he denied sharply. “You could use the workout.”

“Real good summer-atin, aren’t you?” 

“Samaritan. And I ain’t never said I was. Dunno why you little drips fancied me a good tag-along if you expected chivalry,” he scoffed, ignoring the pounding in his head. 

“We ‘spected you to at least know a thing or two about the Devil an’ the stupid stuff he does!” Cuphead snapped, stopping and turning around to face Dice. He’d gotten a little red in the face, and his tone had changed. But somehow Dice didn’t know what to think about that. “If you were the least bit goddamned helpful, you’d tell us who in the damned hell we’re even god-damned fighting!”

_Whaa-? Whozah… eyyy, waz the big ideaa… dumpin’ a bucket on me..._

_You’re drunk off your ass. Go home before some hick mugs you._

_Yanno, we’re allll’ve us hicks. But that li’l laaady, who jes’ rode in, lemme tell ya ‘bout her…_

_Ya did. Now hit the road, bub._

_Nah nah, she rich, reallll rich, like you wouldn’t believe, an’ guessy what… guessaguessaguess…_

_I’ll bite if you beat it._

_See here… thisss guyyy, who’s got two thumbs here, iss me, has got a cushy l’il job as ‘er profess’r!_

“... Okay. Should’ve guessed. Don’t ‘spect me to forgive you.”

“What?” asked Dice, his head spinning. Cuphead looked at him quizzically.

“I said don’t ex-pect me to for-give you. Jus’ ‘cause you gave one little tip doesn’t mean you’re a goddamn saint, an’ it sure as hell doesn’t mean I’m happy you’re here, in this stupid goddamned maze,” he grumbled, hoisting Mugman back up as he sagged more, drool escaping his mouth in lazy strings.

“The hell did I –” Dice started, groaning out of his sentence and drilling his knuckles into his temples with concealed frustration. The last time he’d been so hammered, he’d woken up strapped to the Devil’s chandelier with his own suspenders. And he’d done it himself, by his boss’s account, while everyone watched and fell into hysterics. Naturally. He later learned the invaluable art of pretending to drink. To stay sharp during deals, and to keep his suspenders where they should be.

“You gonna keep up the damn pace, or not?” Cuphead snapped from up ahead. Dice grumbled dazedly and kept on.

“Why couldn’t you be a happy drunk, like your pop?” he muttered irritably. Cuphead slowed.

“...Elder Kettle went drinking?” he questioned. Despite his splitting headache Dice couldn’t help but burst into raspy, debauched laughter. 

“Oh, boy, he hit the sauce six ways to Sunday back in the day! Drank an’ drank, I had’a push ‘im off’a me half the time!” 

“But he never allowed alcohol in the house!” Cuphead exclaimed angrily. “You’re puttin’ me on, you sleazy piece of –”

“Nah, he’d be all wound up at first, mister ‘servin’ my country and havin’ some downtime’, but as soon as I got half a pint down his gullet he loosened up quick!” Dice scanned the boy’s flushed face and saw nothing but annoyed disbelief. “He never told you nothin’ ‘bout that?”

“No, he jus’ told us never to drink any.”

_Did yuh say yer her pro-fess-or?_

_Ehh?_

_Kid, I thought I told ya to stop comin’ in here. Bar ain’t no place for fellas yer age._

_Ain’t nobody heah. Ansuh the quesh’n._

_Yeah, I’se her teach, boy, whassit to you?_

_Yuh think y’could show me ‘er?_

_Wh- aw, you got an eye for the lady?_

_I got an eye fo’ her money._

_Mm. Bit young to have that mind._

_I don’ got no bar an’ booze ta keep me fed._

_Hey, I ain’t gonna be no gov’ner on the dough I make. ‘Specially when blitzed galoots go breakin’ my glassware._

_Well. In that case, ah got a pro-po-sition for yuh._

“Goddammit, Dice!” Cuphead was pulling his arm, and the other one was burning something awful. He heard his shirt rip in a couple places as he quickly shuffled to his feet before he got stuck in the glass. Looking around, he found they had entered a wide, round-ceilinged room, still comprised of those disgusting, pulsing walls. 

“Cuh-Cupheaaaad!” Mugman’s voice came wobbling through the sickening sloshing noises of the liquid around them. For the first time the melted glass appeared to be actively trying to ensnare him, raising walls and forming a dome over his head, encasing the boy in a tight glass prison. 

“Mugs! Hold on, I’ll shoot you ou- whooaaaa!” The glass rippled under Cuphead’s feet like a wave, and Dice struggled to keep his balance as well, trying to assess the burn on his torso at the same time. 

The melted glass moved up into a tall mound before them, and slowly began to pinch and stretch into a more human-like shape, like a vase being methodically formed at the end of a blowpipe. Round edges sharpened into right angles, and a coarse, displeased expression pressed into the surface of the face. 

“So, made it to the exit, didja?” 

If the tall robust figure of the old bartender wasn’t still forming, Dice would think he had blacked out again. “What’re you, Rum?” he asked. The broad-shouldered man huffed and drew a bottle out of the glass vat beneath him. 

“Whiskey, kid,” he corrected dully. He clearly knew Dice was taunting him, and annoyingly seemed intent on ignoring it. “That, ah… shorty drunk was rum. Or uh… confound it, it don’t matter anymore.” As he stopped down and filled the bottle with the sludge on the floor, another of the old troop started to appear beside him. 

“Dice, there’re three of these shmucks, right?” Cuphead asked, firing at the glass casing surrounding his brother. Dice nodded in resignation. Not one of them would be happy to see him, either. 

“Ooh, I feel so very *hic* light-headed, but everything is… a little more put-together, it feels…” the second member droned as she formed a figure Dice hadn’t seen in quite some time. 

“Look again, doll. We’re, ah, no more sturdy than we were before,” Whiskey muttered, taking a swing of the sludge. Dice watched it run down the inside of his transparent throat. 

“Not sure gettin’ plastered is the best way to keep us from passin’,” the former manager snarked. 

“Hey, you’re already sloppy-faced. Jus’… evenin’ the field,” Whiskey rambled. “‘Sides, by this point, I need drink in me to, ah, wanna thrash you…”

A bright blue bullet shot through the rugged man’s bottle. “Then you shouldn’t be drinkin’, now should ya?!” Cuphead shouted. “If you can’t beat us sober, then you’re more of a damn buncha shnooks than I thought!”

“Oh, we couldn’t possibly *hic* do anything sober!” The former miss Martini claimed lightly. “What’re we if not under *hic* under the influence? What’s left?”

“I dunno, who you are? Things ya like to do?” Cuphead suggested irritably. 

“Hyeh hyehhhh, what a lark, heee *hic* thinks there’s something left!” As usual, Rum had arrived unobtrusively and uninvited. “I… I tell ya, cup-boyyyy… Oh, hey, yer *hic* not a cup no more… I’se drunker’n I think…” he prattled on, trying to scratch his head but instead getting his half-melted fingers stuck in his unkempt, briery hair. 

“That’s right, we’re both tougher this time around. It’s gonna be a real fight!” Cuphead proclaimed. He had been charging a shot for the past minute or so, and now fired it at the glass around his brother, finally freeing him. “You ready to go, Mugs?”

Mugman stumbled to his feet and nodded. “I might, uh, lose my lunch in a little bit, but sure thing. Maybe we should rough ‘em up a bit, but try talking to th – _OW!_ ” Whiskey was fully reformed and already putting the heat on, socking Mugman square in the face while the brothers were distracted. 

“Hey!” Cuphead snapped. “If you’re gonna punch someone, punch me! Mugs don’t deserve no more damn blows to the face!”

“Oh? Whatever happened to him…?” Martini murmured, laying a hand on Mugman’s face only for him to flinch back from the heat and shoot it off at the wrist. The fight was in full swing now. Whiskey procured a new bottle and began brandishing it before the ornery former cup, and Martini seemed to be simply trying to injure Mugman through touch alone. It figured; she was always a real flighty broad. 

“Hey, guess we’s the ones who’s fightin’ *hic* eashother…” Rum slurred. He’d gotten much closer in the thirty seconds or so that Dice had been watching the others, and immediately the former manager turned all of his attention to the drunk. He wasn’t particularly dangerous, but Dice couldn’t recall a single time he’d done anything rational or predictable. That could be said for quite a few members of his defunct staff. 

“Whooaaa, there, jes’… lemme get a chance to… gemmyself *hic* together… is a long night this been…”

“Yeah, s’called death,” Dice returned. “Ya like it?”

“Ehh, iss goddis perks, yanno… sure I feels all dark an’ col’ an’ sloppy, but on the upside I… I tell ya, I’se…” the stout man trailed off, then promptly vomited on the floor as a large portion of the ankle-deep sludge bubbled up through the glass under his inexplicably formed clothing. “…S’better’n bein’ under yer boot, thasfer damn sure!” he added loudly, lunging lazily forward. 

“I could beat you back into this stinkin’ muck in seconds, y’know,” Dice pointed out, sidestepping another lunge and spewing of sludge. “You don’t got no power down here, certainly not over myself.”

“Well, leas’ the Devil gav’us more’n glass an’ a drink! I ain’t been like this since, uh…” he swayed and rubbed at his eye, grotesquely bringing most of it away on his palm. “Oh, you… you made us a li’l deal, didn’t ya?”

Dice froze. His head was pounding more than ever. “That was…”

_Yuh show me da lady, mistah. Maybe get me workin’ at ‘er big ol’ house ‘r somethin’. An’ I’ll get ‘er whole foh-tune, in tahm._

_Ehhhh… ya don’ soun’ cultured ‘nuff ta work there. Sides, I ain’t gonna help some greedy li’l upstart if there ain’t no return…_

_Oh, there’s gonna be return, mistah. See, when ah get alla her money, Ah’ll give a hefty bit’a it t’ each’a ya._

_Each…?_

_Yeah, t’ keep quah-et. Each’a us foh gets a qua-tuh of what ah get outta her._

_Hm. That don’t sound too bad. But why should I put so much on some kid I don’ even know?_

_Oh, yuh know me. Even if yuh don’ think ya do._

_…! That’s… You’re..._

_Now, we all in?_

_Hell, I’m in s’long as you are._

_I… I didn’t think you were real…_

_S’that what’s goin’ around? My man must be messin’ around again…_

Dice’s back was burning. He was on top of the melted glass, eyes at the pulsating ceiling, and all the feeling was gone from his body. He’d hoped they’d be out of the booze-air before he hit his crash, but unfortunately it had come sooner than expected. Rum was still standing over him, looking like he would fall over and drag Dice down into the glassy mire at any moment. Dice struggled to move something, anything, but all efforts threatened to black him out again. 

“Hehhhh, no power, huh? Well, if I’se a nickel fr’ev’ry time I got ta look down atcha… I’d be even more flat broke that I already am, heh hyehhh! Er, was… thas a thought, ain’t it –” The disheveled drunkard was interrupted by one of the boys’ bullets shattering his now cooled and solid head into thousands of pieces, and in his current state Dice couldn’t help but marvel at those instead of forcing himself to his feet. God, he hated being drunk.

“Come on, Dice, get your stupid self up! Let’s get outta here before we kick the bucket from alcohol poisoning!” Cuphead was heaving at his upper arms, while Mugman was kicking at the hardening glass under and around him. Dice barely paid any mind to their efforts, and he didn’t have to try hard to ignore them, not with the air still flowing through his nose and down his throat…

“Wha…” he slurred out. Something was prodding at him, in his mind, forcing him to move. It was an energy he was familiar with, an energy that had never let him rest. An energy that told him that he was dying, and whoever had placed a bet on his survival was currently losing. Somehow feeling even more empty-headed, Dice sat up, the glass cracking off behind him and ripping his shirt for good. He hardly noticed the pain. He trudged through the sludge, his posture getting straighter with every step, and though he knew this force in his mind, this cheating mechanism would fade as soon as he made it to the next level, he could feel his usual grin spreading back across his face, and he turned back to the brothers, who were looking rightly confused.

“Well, come on. Stay in here much longer, we’ll really be givin’ the big man something to laugh about.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and so ends, uh, act 1! next chapter will be an intermission of sorts with a couple of fellas we haven't seen since chapter 2, so that's pretty exciting! also, if you'd like to see art of the casino bosses in this chapter and the two before it, check out my DA because that's going up right after this! thanks for reading, and have a lovely day!


	6. An Itch in the Mind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys! sorry this is a day late but it's been one dumb week. and hey, i'm human too (see what i did there), and it was only a matter of time before i folded at least a little bit. anyhow, now that the big fat apology's out of the way, enjoy a lovely little break from consistent what-and-why moments by way of concerned neighbors and overly zealous gambling!

“Hello? Boys? ...Oh, gosh, I hope they haven’t run away…”

“Calm yourself down, they’re prob’ly just out an’ about.” Moe stepped onto the porch and rapped his knuckles hard on the door, considerably louder than his companion had been several seconds earlier. Just as before, there was no answer. “Well, if they ain’t around, no use in loitering until they are. I’ve got work to do, and… well, I guess you don’t hafta rush to do our business taxes, but –”

“Moe, I’m worried about them!” Weepy insisted. “They came to us, utterly swamped with grief, and all we had to say was that their grandfather wasn’t worth mourning! Who on earth do we think we are?”

“We also offered to put ‘em up until they had someone to look after ‘em again. Prob’ly just found someone else to stay with. Can’t blame ‘em for not telling us, we ain’t exactly family to ‘em.”

“Well, I… I do want them to be safe, and okay… it’s the least we can do, after –”

“Alright, alright, point made. So, what, you wanna sit on this stupid porch until they come by an’ ask what the hell we’re doing?”

“Well, maybe! Unless we could…” Weepy took hold of the doorknob and turned it before gingerly pushing forward. To both of their surprise, the door slowly swung open. 

“Hm. Guess kids wouldn’t know to do that… or maybe they keep the damn thing open all the time,” Moe mused. 

“Should we…” Weepy trailed off. 

“I dunno, barging in would be a little impolite, wouldn’t it?” Moe queried with a teasing smirk.

Weepy narrowed his eyes in annoyance. “Well, I don’t see them coming to the door, do you?”

It was eerily quiet as the two entered the front room. The fireplace still had a few glowing embers, but that aside it seemed there was no life left in the house. 

“Hmm. Looks like they were digging through the stairway cupboard,” Moe pointed out, gesturing towards the open cupboard door and, curiously enough, a large open chest. 

“Oh, gosh!” exclaimed Weepy, making his way over to it. “This is Kettle’s chest, he gave us clean clothes from it for Psycarrot and I when we left to help the boys last year…”

“Clothes? The hell’s a kettle need clothes for?” Moe asked, quirking an eyebrow.

Weepy’s eyebrows shot up at the question. “We never told you? He was a human once, like ourselves. He said this was a chest of things from that time, before he was a kettle.”

“Oh, yeah. Think I remember Psy telling me that. Don’t think I was too surprised. Hell, wouldn’t surprise me if every talking object on this Isle was a human at some point.” He crouched down beside Weepy and looked into the chest. “So this is his memory chest, huh… hat’s missing,” he muttered, noticing an open hatbox. “I’m going to check upstairs. Might just be mourning… or curious.”

As Moe left Weepy to the chest, and the latter found himself resisting the urge to go through the kettle’s old things. That really would be rude, even moreso than entering someone’s house uninvited. The empty hatbox was odd, however, and Weepy carefully lifted it out of the chest. “Now why would a cup take out a hat, of all things?” he wondered aloud. There were plenty more intriguing things lying in the chest from where he was sitting. Faded photographs, what looked like military badges in a glass case, and even a rusted metal flask. Yet one of them had taken a hat. 

“They ain’t nowhere upstairs,” Moe announced, coming back downstairs. “There is another empty hatbox up there, though. In one of their rooms. The room’s a mess, too.”

“One for each of them…” Weepy murmured. “A mess? How?”

“The sheets are all strewn around, almost on the floor. Other room’s neat by comparison. Surprised that whoever was kicking in their sleep didn’t, uh, spill. That’s what would happen, yeah?”

“Yes, it would,” Weepy nodded, deep in concerned thought. “... This all still seems like they ran away, and by the looks of it wanted to leave as soon as possible.”

“Hmm. I dunno. Doesn’t look like anything’s gone upstairs, and they didn’t even lock the front door,” Moe reminded him, nevertheless sounding unconvinced of either his or Weepy’s inferences. “But hey, if they wanted to get out quick, I reckon they took the Express. You could ask around over there, see if they rode out anywhere yesterday.”

“Oh, that’s a grand idea!” Weepy agreed. “You know for someone who doesn’t get out much, you’re pretty good detective.”

“I don’t get out much? Doing paperwork at the observatory instead of at home doesn’t make you much more social, bud,” Moe snarked. “But yeah, have fun chatting up… who works on the Express?”

“Moe!” Weepy interjected. “You’ve never met the Blind Specter?”

“You ever hear me say I’m going for a train ride?”

“The stop is hardly a quarter mile from the farm! You could at least take a moment to say hello!”

“What, you want me to just walk over, say ‘hey, good morning strangers’ and leave?”

“No, you – oh, come on. The fertilizer can wait twenty minutes.”

—-

“Hello! Welcome to station one for the Isle Express! Where will you be going today?”

“Hello, mister Specter. I’m not sure where we’re going yet, but we would like to ask you a question or two.”

“Oh!” the ghost exclaimed. “You’re Weepy! I’ve told you… you can just call me Spec, you know…”

“Yes! I’ve brought my friend Moe along, he also works on the farm.”

“Hello.” Spec hadn’t met this “Moe” before, the voice he had hardly heard was low, slightly froggy, and quite unfamiliar. He smiled wide. 

“Good to meet you, mister Moe!” He stuck out his hand and after a few seconds a stocky, rough one accepted it. After floating a little closer to his voice for the handshake, Spec became acutely aware of a strong soil-y smell. Weepy had never made that particular impression, so Spec guessed Moe did more of the grunt work on the farm.

“Can’t help but admire a hard worker!” he complimented cheerfully, finally letting go of Moe’s hand. He heard a confused grunt. 

“How did you – anyway, like my pal said. We’ve got some questions.”

“Oh, yes, of course! Ask away,” Spec replied, leaning back in midair with his arms behind his head, trying to listen for any more passengers approaching. 

“Have you, by any chance, had the cups on board in the past day or so?” Weepy asked. Spec put a finger to his chin and thought a moment. The brothers boarded the train fairly often, usually just to cross the Isle, but he wasn’t certain he’d had them on board as recently as the two were asking. 

“I don’t think I’ve heard them…” he admitted, still half-lost in thought. “And they don’t really smell like anything… unless…” A thought came. He snapped his fingers to hold onto it. “Yesterday morning. There was… well, more than one passenger that boarded, and whoever it was… wasn’t much for conversation. They were murmuring a bit with each other, but I couldn’t pick out a voice. I asked if we’d met and they just went… dead silent. They got off at the end of the line, and their footsteps were very… shuffle-y, as if they were very short. They didn’t have a smell either, but…” he trailed off. There wasn’t really a “but.” Instead he shrugged. “Anyhow… it could have been them!”

“Huh. But why would they try to, uh, sneak past you?” Moe asked. 

Spec shrugged again. “I’m not sure. I never got the impression they didn’t like me, but… well, perhaps they were up to something.”

“Oh, great. That’s just what we need,” Moe groaned. “What, they gonna actually join the Devil this time around?”

“Yes, I heard the casino re-opened just yesterday…” Spec replied. “It was all T-Bone could talk trash about last night. Not the best place to work, you know, aside from the employment benefits…” he muttered, instinctively rubbing his thumbs into their opposite palms. 

“Wait, the casino re-opened yesterday, right around the time that you have these quiet, shifty passengers that may have been the brothers?” Weepy summarized, sounding a little concerned. Spec nodded. “You don’t think they –“

“Weepy, they’re kids. They can’t open a business. Much less one as ludicrous and hated as the Devil’s Casino. It’s definitely the real deal, the question is why it re-opened, and why they went over there in the exact same timeframe.”

“Well…” Spec started quietly. “Not to push tickets, but it sounds like you need to travel to the third isle. Just to see what all you’re worrying about.”

A quiet moment. Some shifting around. “Alright,” Weepy’s voice finally came back. “It’s certainly no trouble just checking.”

“Just checking on a damned evil casino,” Moe retorted with a pained sigh. “And you can go hunt down a pair of kids for an apology all you want, but I got work to do.”

“You said the worst of it! It’s only fair that you come along to make sure they’re okay!” 

The argument continued until Spec couldn’t hear it any more, with a quick thank-you thrown in between arguments as the two walked away. The ghost sighed and began helping one of the passengers who had been patiently awaiting luggage assistance. He had to admit, he didn’t know that much about the brothers. They were kind enough to him, and despite the fact that they’d unwittingly lost him his eyes Spec much preferred helping others get around without any soul-stealing strings attached. Besides, he’d made a good friend or two since losing his and T-Bone’s contract. Thus he found himself hopeful that the two were okay, and that casino wouldn’t get to them before their well-meaning neighbors did. 

\---

“Gosh, you really want that King Dice to suffer don’t you?” Kettle remarked, letting a chuckle escape from behind his mustache. The Devil answered his chuckle with a raspy guffaw before sticking his cigar back between his teeth. 

“You remind me of me, back in the day. I was all about grudges an’ punishment, you know, the works. But if you haven’t yet noticed…” he blew a perfect ring of smoke that framed the cloud he’d previously blown. “Without a little entertainment, Hell gets pretty damn boring.”

“Yes, I suppose I wouldn’t know quite what to do with myself if we hadn’t this to watch…” Kettle admitted. “Though I’ll be honest, I’m a tad less invested knowing that they must survive in order for us to have said entertainment.”

“Hmm, no excitement without stakes, eh?” The Devil mused. “Well, in that case, let’s add some.”

“What would you propose?” the new manager asked, feeling himself smiling a little. He knew what the Devil would ask, and felt a familiar exhilaration. The Devil stroked his chin in thought a moment. 

“Well, Dice an’ I usually do a bet, but I ain’t sure it’d be all that fair this time around…”

“Something tells me these ‘bets’ of yours have never been fair, but really, there’s no other stance that could be taken,” Kettle pointed out. “They’ll make it out, plain and simple.”

The Devil quirked an eyebrow. “How d’you figure that?”

Something tickled at the back of Kettle’s head. A spirit he couldn’t describe, a conviction he couldn’t place. “Well, you’re the Devil,” he said slowly. “They’re the opposite. It’s just how these stories always go, you just can’t win.” The tickle persisted. No, that wasn’t it, what he said wasn’t the reason behind it, but he had gotten the Devil thinking. 

“So you think this is some kinda storybook, do ya…” he muttered. “Hell, they’re in my house an’ everything this time around, but even without your little morals you still think...hmmm.” He took another drag and smoke poured out of his pointed ears. “All right, mister Kettle, I’ll bet. I don’t think they’ll make it. I think their little heads’ll be split open, and my boys’ll bring ‘em to me in pieces.”

“Well, you can’t say that when they can’t be hurt,” Kettle pointed out. The Devil grinned.

“Who d’you think is makin’ ‘em invincible, genius?”

“... Why, boss, I think that’s cheating,” returned Kettle innocently.

“I call it leveling the playing field.”

Kettle scratched at his mustache and rolled his eyes. “Fair enough. So what’re the stakes?” The Devil leaned back in his chair and put his feet on the desk, puffing away in thought. 

“Hmm. Let’s say, if you win, the boys go home free. I was about to hire ‘em in whether they made it or not, but havin’ it up in the air makes things a lot more interesting.” He took a die from his desk drawer and rolled it between his fingers, gazing intently. “I think I’ll even let little ol’ Dice off the hook. He’s got some moxie, opting to knock around with such a sappy pair. Foolish, but impressive.” He started tossing the die in his hand thoughtfully. “But if you lose…” The die fell towards his mouth and he caught it between his teeth. “They’re all mine.” He clenched his teeth and thin fractures spread across the small cube’s surface before it shattered into pieces. The Devil gulped down the small shards, a scene which would have been amusing if it weren’t in such a perilous context. He grinned as Kettle felt himself staring. “I’ll hire the boys, and whatever I decide to do to Dice ain’t gonna be pretty. An’ you might be inclined to let me be right, jus’ to see what I do, but trust me when I say I can make you hate every moment of it.”

Kettle felt the Devil’s eyes pierce directly into his soul, and again that tingling in the back of his mind came back. It was a strange yet iron-clad feeling, a desire to not, under any circumstances, let the Devil win his bet. Which was peculiar, because he really was curious as to what the Devil considered “not pretty.” Or how he planned on “hiring” the brothers. It was all so murky and rife with tantalizing if not macabre possibilities. And yet… it hurt, how much he wanted the Devil’s current victims to go free. And furthermore…

“All right,” he said slowly. “I’ll raise you.”

The Devil quirked an eyebrow. “You’ll raise me?” he repeated, amused. Kettle nodded and leaned forward, elbows propped on the glossy mahogany.

“In addition to all of the terms you’ve just proposed, I posit that if I win… you pack up your whole operation and leave town.”

The Devil froze in place, lips curled around his cigarette and foot locked mid-twitch. It seemed Kettle had gotten a rise out of him. “The casino?” he asked. “My staff, my contracts, Hell itself, all gotta move… an’ I gotta find some new suckers to suck the souls outta.” He narrowed his eyes and watched his smoke trail dance upward towards the ceiling. Then, quietly at first, he began chuckling. “You know, I really think I missed out. If I hadn’t scared Dice so bad back in the day, we mighta had bets half as interesting as this one. You’ve got yourself a bet, Kettle. Just don’t be surprised when I get dirty.” He leaned back in his chair and clapped his hands twice in rapid succession, as if he was summoning someone. “There we go,” he declared, putting his arms behind his head. “All nice and killable. Now all we gotta do is wait.”


	7. Card Shark Sisyphus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh, yeah. i feel real good about this one. like this is the first chapter since chapter 2 that i really got high hopes for. which is surprising, considering that i'm not a huge fan of this particular miniboss. anyway, enjoy!

_It seems fairly obvious who we’re meant to fight here…_

The fourth level was made like a dim, lazy desert, except rather than sand and the occasional cactus (which Mugman believed deserts were meant to contain) the only atmospheric elements for miles around were piles and loose stacks of poker chips, and lying across this garish plain was one of those long metal chip rakes, large and rusted. With the way everything was scaled, the blue-clad boy couldn’t help but worry that their foe would not be quite as down to size this time around. 

“What’s the point of making a giant poker table if there ain’t any giant people to play on it?” Cuphead griped. Dice looked up towards the dark void of a ceiling with that glint in his eye, the green that shone in the haze of the directionless dusk around them. 

“Don’t jinx us, kid. I wouldn’t put it past the Devil. As it stands, this is just an arena… to do what, I ain’t sure I want to know. But as you boys know, I’ve got plenty up my sleeve when it comes to poker. So if that’s what we’re doing… you follow my lead,” Dice muttered with the utmost seriousness. 

“What?” Cuphead returned indignantly. “I’ve beaten you plenty! You’re no more’n a –“

“You haven’t beat him, though,” Dice pointed out quietly. “Nobody has. He was our best hustler, besides… well, one of ‘em. Wouldn’t wanna go up against either.”

“Either?” Mugman asked, quirking an eyebrow. 

“You heard me, and you don’t need to hear no more,” Dice hissed through his teeth. “Now let’s find the exit quietly, and pretend there ain’t a fight somewhere and here. He has a nasty streak of coming when he’s called.”

“What? That’s stupid,” declares Cuphead. “So as long as we don’t say his name, we’re hunky-dory? Even if he’s just hiding a few feet away behind a stack of chips–“

“Well, howdy yourself!”

Dice pinched the bridge of his nose so hard Mugman expected to hear a snap. “Why do I even goddamn bother…”

“Don’t be shy, now! Look right this way where I can see ya! Or, well, I say, where you can see me!”

Mugman and his brother looked behind them and upward to see a tall, skinny fellow dressed in one of the most ridiculous outfits they’d seen yet. He stood triumphantly atop one of the taller piles of chips, hands squarely on his hips. 

“So you’re the guy we’re supposed to fight!” Cuphead exclaimed, jabbing a finger at him accusingly. The man’s eyebrows shot up and he put his hands up with a chuckle. 

“Now, now, I’d be no good if I didn’t know when to let sleeping dogs lie,” he explained. He had such a thick dialect, Mugman hadn’t really noticed it before. “Last time we had a good ol’-fashioned shootout, you blew me to pieces!”

“You didn’t exactly shoot, either,” Cuphead retorted. The cowboy took a pistol from his holster and twirled it in his fingers. 

“Well sure I didn’t, can’t shoot nothin’ with no hands! But hey, back to it, I ain’t here to do that.” He replaced the gun and jumped off of his high position, sliding through the other chips all the way to the bottom. He sauntered over at a leisurely pace, the giant spurs on his boots clanking with every step. 

“Chips, give up this shtick. You’re done. Shove off an’ burn in Hell where you belong,” Dice snapped, arms folded tightly across his chest. Chips laughed, a throaty and surprisingly deep noise coming from such a slight frame. 

“Ain’t that where you belong too, mister? Gov’ner? _King?_ And these boys as well? We’re all in the same herd a’ cattle, Dicey, an’ the Devil’s our buckaroo. So,” he stated, taking off his hat and digging around inside. “Why not break for one last game?”

“What’s in it for you, Bettigan?” Dice sniped.

“Oh, ya know. Thrill. Memories. Gettin’ out in your place,” he listed, grinning a little. “Same herd, Same chances. Someone gets kept around for milk, an’ the other poor stiffs get the spit.” A deck of cards was finally proudly pulled from his hat. “We’ll use the chips around us for bettin’. Everyone’s gotta push ‘em in the pot in order to bet ‘em, an’ they ain’t paper maché.”

“Hmph. Well, at least you have to push ‘em too,” Mugman muttered. Chips grinned again.

“Oh, no! No, no, I may have the works now, spurs an’ all, but at the end of the day… Ol’ Scratch still has me in pieces.” he pushed at his cheek, and suddenly a hence unseen break appeared. His mouth, no, his whole face was in segments, and as he kept pushing said mouth horrifyingly shifted several inches to the left of his face. 

“You’re that confident?” Cuphead questioned, unable to completely conceal his unease. Chips sat into a cross-legged position on the ground, and cut the deck. 

“Wanna find out, kiddo?”

–––

Mugman had never cared much for poker, and really preferred to gamble on winning a game he could actually control. That said, he was certain that the game he was watching was a very one-sided affair. He heaved a stack of five blue chips across the table, and a few seconds later he pushed it a few feet more to Chips’s side of the pot. 

“Dice, you can’t just bet the same thing every time!” Cuphead argued. “We’ll be flat broke in no time!”

Dice sighed in discontent as he swiped up the cards Chips dealt to him. “Boy, you ain’t never hustled a game in your life. You bet a little, of course you’re gonna win. You bet a little more, you win again, on an’ on until he catches you bettin’ too high an’ yanks your pants down.”

“Ya know Dicey, it sets in a li’l better if the kid actually gets hustled,” Chips pointed out with a smirk. “That’ll get ‘im good. Won’t never play again.”

“Just what you want out of a casino,” retorted Dice, shifting around his hand a little. “Mugm– kid, get me five more tens.”

“Hey now, most’a mine got acquainted with dear mister quill pen ‘fore they had a chance to even know they was hustled,” Chips drawled with a snicker. “I bet my arm.” He twisted his left arm with his other hand and took it clean off, neatly placing it beside the monstrously heavy stack of coins. “‘Bout a hundred li’l chips in that puppy alone.”

“Mm. I’ll fold,” muttered Dice. Mugman resisted the urge to show his confusion. From where he’d been pushing chips around, Dice had appeared to have a three of a kind. As he heaved the stack over to Chips he tried to see their opponent’s hand, but the cards were back in the deck before he even knew it. 

“What’re you even gonna do if you get outta hell?” Cuphead challenged. “Everyone you know’s gotta be dead by now!”

An eyebrow ticked but Chips kept shuffling, eyes on the deck. “Not burn alive, I imagine. Have a drink, see where the world’s at. Net me a good night with a filly… guess you’re still a young’un, wouldn’t understand all that crocky stuff,” he reasoned with a smirk, dealing the cards again. 

“Well, when you die, you’ll just end up right back here!” Cuphead returned. “Your ‘fillies’, whatever those are, ain’t gonna help you stay outta here!” 

A sharp bellow of a laugh forced its way out of Chips as he examined his hand. “Oh, they won’t, I’m sure ‘a that. S’too late for me to do jack about this Hell business, but even one good night on the town would be a real blessing from the man upstairs.”

“Well, you’re the man upstairs, aren’t you?” Mugman panted, heaving over the usual. “You’re cheating your way back to life!”

“Hey, now, I ain’t no bona fide saint, son,” Chips insisted.”But you shoulda won at least once by now, with all them chips behind you. I got far less chances than you got, an’ I –“

“Fewer,” Mugman interrupted as he pushed the latest stack over to his side. Chips’s thumb slipped out of place as he paused his reshuffling, and for a moment his stoic half-smirk wavered. 

“Come again, kid?”

“You don’t have less chances, you have fewer chances,” Mugman explained. “Elder Kettle taught us that when we were only five!” he added proudly. Chips finished shuffling the deck and started dealing again, more hesitantly this time. 

“You wanna pop on a stove-pipe an’ go talk a donkey’s hind leg off with the other big flannel-mouths?” he snarked, shifting his hand around for the first time since the game started. 

“I beg your pardon?” Mugman murmured, dumbstruck. 

“He thinks you’re a babbling little dandy,” Dice clarified, looking and sounding a little more excited about his hand than usual. 

“I bet my left arm an’ leg, this time ‘round,” Chips declared, twisting off both and putting them in the pot. “That’s 200.”

“Mugs, get it,” Dice ordered. Mugman hastily pushed two black chips into the pot with Chips’s appendages, too focused on the stack’s outrageous weight to chuckle at Dice spouting a more familiar nickname in his distractedness. Chips tapped his remaining foot on the floor, anxiously biting his lip. Dice grinned. “I raise you,” he said. “A hundred.”

“Fold,” Chips muttered, slamming his cards on the floor as if folding quicker would cut his losses. Dice flashed Cuphead his hand and the boy snickered. Mugman wished he could see it, but by the time he had finished pushing the chips back over to their side the cards had been recollected, and Cuphead was toying with Chips’s disembodied hand.

“Man, you sure got some skinny fingers!” his brother snickered, holding them up one by one. “Can you feel me holdin’ your hand?” 

Chips chuckled defensively and cut the deck, taking much longer to prepare it with only one hand. “There you ain’t, ya little git. What, ‘ja think I’d be all undone an’ distracted on the dead? Yer greener’n I thought.”

“Oh, alright,” Cuphead replied, a familiar smarmy tone that Mugman was used to hearing when his brother had something up his sleeve. “Then I’m sure you won’t mind…” he continued, slipping the boot off the leg they’d won. “If I fiddle around here?” 

Cuphead ran his fingertips lightly over the sole of Chips’s lost foot, and the latter slowly, not-so-subtly sank his teeth into his bottom lip, hard. His fingers trembled, and a card or two stuck up in the deck as he shuffled it. He muttered something incomprehensible under his breath, and finally got around to dealing the cards back out. A moment of silence passed as both parties examined their hands, until Chips snickered and kicked off his last leg.

“You meetin’ me, mister dicey?” he challenged, looking very confident despite sitting squarely on the base of his torso. Dice’s lip curled into a smirk.

“You can rest your arms, mug-boy. I’ll meet your leg…” he nodded to Cuphead and the boy tossed Chips’s other leg back into the pot with a pout. “And raise ya an arm.” Chips bit his lip again, and Mugman was surprised it didn’t bleed. He regained composure, however, and slipped his hand between his teeth before thrusting his right arm off his body and into the pot. He couldn’t very well get up to get a pile of chips instead. “Met,” he replied, before matching Dice’s smirk. “Call.”

Dice’s expression remained firm as he laid his hand on the floor. Mugman craned his neck to look, and his eyebrows shot up in dismay. It was junk. The highest card was a king, but once Chips spat out his hand in turn it was clear they had lost. 

“Hah! Three of a kind!” he laughed. “You ain’t so good at bluffin’, eh boss?! An’, boy, does it feel good to never hafta call ya that in earnest again! Read ‘em an’ weep, mister!”

“Mm-hmm. Gotta say, I’m impressed, Bettigan,” Dice asserted smoothly. Chips cut off his own celebration in surprise. 

“What? Big bad Mister King Dice, daring to pay a bit’a respect to l’il ol’ Chips Bettigan? If you was still a big cheese worth talkin’ about, I’d almost feel flattered!” he exclaimed sarcastically,

“Well, it’s just… I didn’t think my best card shark would be so easy to hustle,” Dice admitted, his smirk returning in earnest. Chips’s snarky grin dropped a little.

“The hell you spewin’, hot shot?” he griped. Dice gathered up his junk hand and flipped through the five cards calmly.

“Tell me, mister Bettigan, sir… how d’you plan on collecting your earnings?”

Chips’s face screwed up in annoyance. “Wh- Why, I’ll just…” he trailed off, staring at the haphazardly piled limbs sitting ten feet away from him before turning his confused gaze to his own form, which at the moment was quite immobile.

“...Hey, kid, be a pal an’ bring my pieces this way, huh?” he asked Mugman nervously. Mugman almost obeyed out of ingrained decency, but managed to stay rooted where he was.

“Why don’tcha give us somethin’ of a consolation prize first, eh?” Dice asked with a grin. “Say, where we can find the road to the next inane detour?”

“Wh- That ain’t fair! There ain’t no consolation prizes in po… puh…” he stammered, unable to finish his protest. Cuphead had returned to agitating the soles of Chips’s unattached feet, and luckily for them it seemed he was very ticklish.

“I got all day to do this,” Cuphead said deviously. “Hell, there ain’t no days down here. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the show.” He was, of course, referring to the progressive reddening and tensing of Chips’s thin face as he desperately tried not to crack. “All you gotta do is kindly show us the way out.”

“Jus’ as the boy said,” Dice agreed. “An’ if gettin’ you riled up ain’t enough…” he took up one of the arms and held Chips’s pinky between his thumb and forefinger. “I can always start breakin’ digits.”

“WHA-HA-HA-HAT?!?” Chips finally wheezed out in terror. “You wou-wouldn’t _hyeh hah hah haaa_ d-duh-do that! You don’t… _heh heh hyah haha_ … got the guts!”

“Mmm. Mister King Dice don’t got the stomach for discipline, does he?” Dice questioned rhetorically. “Why did I ever think you had the smarts to rig a card game?” He bent the cowboy’s little finger backward, much farther than it was supposed to go. Chips’s eyes widened in pain.

“ _Nononono IT’S UP THE GREEN STACKS ITS UP THE GREEN STACKS!!_ Ohhhhh, tarnation…” he moaned as Dice finally relented, though didn’t yet let his finger go.

“The green stacks,” he repeated slowly. Chips nodded frantically.

“Yeah yeah, behind me there’s a buncha stacks of green chips, they’re arranged kinda like a staircase y’see, ya climb up ‘em an’ there you go, the exit’s always at the highest point…” he rambled, sweat rolling down his forehead in large beads. Dice pinched the finger lightly between his own, and Chips instinctively tensed in anticipation.

“So the exit’s up there,” he mused, looking behind Chips at the stacks he was talking about. Mugman followed his eyes. They did kind of spiral up like a staircase. “And the exit’s always at the highest point? That’s some quality intel, my friend,” he continued thoughtfully. Chips straightened up in surprise.

“You didn’t know that? Ohh, the head honcho ain’t gonna be too pleased with me…” he muttered.

“Well, that’s your trouble,” Dice replied dismissively, dropping the arm and standing up. “C’mon boys, let’s get the hell off’a this neon wasteland.”

“What? Wait!” Chips exclaimed as they walked past him. “Ain’tcha gonna gimme my arms an’ legs back?”

“Shimmy over an’ grab ‘em yourself!” Cuphead returned. “If we gave you a chance to get back together, you’d be on our tails in no time!”

“Kid’s right, Chips,” Dice affirmed, still grinning. “I’d call ‘im a better hustler than you.”

“I- Wait! Y’all can’t just -” Chips cried, his voice cracking. It was that break in his facade that made Mugman slow down. He did feel bad, leaving the former staff member in pieces… like they had the first time…

“Here,” he muttered quietly, rushing over and grabbing Chips’s right arm. “I’ll at least make it easy on you…”

“What?” Chips questioned, face red and dripping with sweat. 

“You may’ve been a bad guy, but you don’t deserve to be left like this,” Mugman explained hastily, finding the empty bit where the arm attached. Just by pressing it to the surface it seemed to reunite with its home vessel.

“Huh,” Chips muttered, holding up his hand and watching his fingers bend. His eyes shifted and locked onto Mugman’s, and the left corner of his mouth shot up quizzically. “Guess they can’t all be quick-wits.”

Before Mugman could ask what he meant his hand swiftly reached down to his belt and he tore his gun out of its holster, pointing it straight up into Mugman’s chin. Startled, the boy pushed himself away, and Chips rapidly fired his pistol in response.

Mugman wouldn’t be surprised if he lost his hearing in the next few minutes. A horrible noise rang in his ears, a long neverending high-pitched tone, and he felt something warm running down his face. He put a hand to his cheek and his gloved fingers came away stained red. Stained red, with…

“Buh…” he murmured, hardly hearing his own voice. “Bluh… blood…” he stumbled backward, feeling sick, and somewhere in the distance heard the familiar sound of his brother’s charge shot. Another gunshot rang out, but this time it was far away, or so it sounded. He fell, and a pair of firm, warm arms caught him. He murmured in sluggish protest as he was swung over Dice’s shoulder, and began bobbing up and down as he was carried away. The ringing subsided a little, and he could pick out bits of words.

“Dumb kid… thought you drips… no mercy…”

“Don’t gimme… come out… shot his face?!”

“C’mon, don’t tell me… blood before…”

“Didn’t think the Devil’d… just plain gross!”

“Ah, man up, kid.”

Mugman could barely make out a bright, blurred light before he had to shut his eyes again. Dice’s last statement echoed in his mind, muffled and distant, as he drifted off with the taste of iron in his mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much for reading! leave a comment if you'd like more faster, or if you just want to say hi! i quite like getting comments, they always make my day :)


	8. Sink or Smoke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is what we're going to call the "trademark very dark" chapter. i try to write as canon-compliant as i can most of the time, but you know, null and void had stormy weather and ex gratia has this. probably the height of my overanalysis, considering all i had to go off of was dice angrily stomping on wheezy out of nowhere in the game. why indeed did that happen? hmmm...

_Gosh, how much blood are humans supposed to have, anyway?_

Cuphead tied his shirt around his brother’s shoulder and arm for the third time, trying in vain to make it tight enough to stop the bleeding. It was honestly annoying how much blood Mugman had lost simply from a bullet grazing his shoulder. 

“Cripes, move over. If you needed help, all you hadda do was ask.”

Dice pushed Cuphead aside and knelt down to undo the boy’s admittedly sloppy knot, already producing a much better one with his more nimble fingers. “Who’s gonna row, then? I ain’t gonna be any good with an oar that long,” Cuphead retorted, a little bitter at his failure to properly help his brother. 

“Might as well drift a little. Ain’t like we’re in a hurry.”

Cuphead sighed and plopped into a sitting position, reluctantly complying with Dice’s suggestion. The two had been somewhat skeptical about coming across a perfectly good wooden rowboat as soon as they entered the next level, but considering that said level seemed entirely comprised out of a deep, ash-choked lake, they hadn’t another option to spare. The lake itself was eerily calm, with the only truly harmful element being the smoke arising from it, making the whole of the dim cavern stink like a forgotten ashtray. Cuphead leaned his elbows on the edge of the boat and stared down into the pale depth. If he disturbed the algae-like top layer of the lake’s surface he could make out vague, nearly motionless figures at its bottom. 

“There we go. Didn’t even have to use both your shirts.” Cuphead snapped up and caught Dice tossing his shirt back just before it whacked him in the face. “Use it to block the smoke, you won’t last five years after this if you keep suckin’ in this much floating nicotine.”

Cuphead nodded and tied the shirt over his nose and mouth, like the most lackluster bandanna imaginable. “Glad you’re so concerned about my health,” he snarked. “How d’you know it’s nicotine, anyway?”

“Smoker,” he explained bluntly. “Every drug’s got its own stench. Plus, you pick up a whole lotta smells from workin’ a casino for so many years. Stupid question, really.”

“How many years were you working there again?”

Dice opened his mouth, then thought better and closed it into a smirk. “Nice try, kid. Doesn’t matter, anyway. Once you learn which smoke smells like what, it’s pretty damn hard to forget.”

“Oh,” Cuphead responded absentmindedly. He was a bit too worried about his brother to have anything particularly clever to add. Mugman’s posture had relaxed since Dice had patched his bullet wound, and now he looked more like he was just sleeping rather than knocked out cold. His face looked a lot paler, though, which was new. Before getting shot, his cheeks had appeared rosy and bright, but now it seemed like the color had drained a little from his face. Cuphead furrowed his brow in thought, trying to figure out this human quirk without caving in and asking Dice. He already felt stupid enough wondering why humans had more than one skin color. 

“His shoulder’ll fix itself after a while,” Dice remarked aloud. “Humans ain’t that weak.”

“I know about healing,” Cuphead returned, annoyed that that’s what Dice thought he was worried about. “You broke something like… six bones last year and those healed up okay.”

“I wasn’t finished, kid. His shoulder’ll heal, but it won’t be like it was never shot. My arm still hurts like the dickens from time to time, and it was a long time coming for my ribs not to feel on fire at least twice a week. It’s like when your brother got his head knocked in. You could still see the cracks.”

Cuphead made a face at Dice so casually referencing Mugman’s near-death experience, but looked back at his brother with this information in mind. “So that gross spot on his face where the bullet grazed last…”

“Gonna be a scar. ‘Specially since we don’t got any first aid in this stinkin’ hole,” Dice explained. Cuphead nodded, vaguely remembering Ribby or Croaks explaining a first aid kit to him. If they had a needle and thread and whatever that weird-smelling clear liquid was called, they could stitch up the already scabbing wound on Mugman’s face. But it looked like he was just on the verge of getting a human version of his old face cracks. Suddenly Cuphead felt very angry. “Why did that stupid poker-cowboy have to shoot him in the face?” he snarled. “And why did it have to be Mugs?” Dice raised an eyebrow at these questions, and shook his head somewhat insultingly.

“Boy, if Bettigan had hit where he intended, your brother wouldn’t even be recognizable. He was quick enough to get caught in the shoulder, and the only way his face got messed up was from the bullet’s shrapnel. So I’d count your brother lucky to not be completely braindead, in both senses of the word.”

“That guy, a good shot? He wasn’t all that accurate when Mugs ‘n me took him out the first time.”

Dice shrugged. “He didn’t have a gun.”

Cuphead figured that was a fair enough point, until he thought about it a bit more. “Hey, he wouldn’t be able to use a gun in his casino staff days…” he pondered. “If he did any gunning, it’d have to be before he got snatched by the Devil! Which means… you knew Chips before he worked at the casino?”

The boy received no answer at first, but as he looked back at the former manager the reason for that became apparent. There was a deep, strangely maudlin look in Dice’s eyes, and also one of the rare moments where Cuphead couldn’t miss the jeweled green in their irises. The dark-skinned man almost always kept a shadow over his eyes, never widening them unless faced with a truly unexpected and unnerving circumstance. With his expression shaded as such he looked shrewd, calculating, above everyone around him. But in the few moments Cuphead had seen that brief green flash he had felt as if he’d seen directly into King Dice’s soul, which tended to leave him feeling nothing less than terrified. Nevertheless, it was clear he’d struck a nerve, and curiosity had always beaten out terror in Cuphead’s book.

“Well, did you?” Dice quickly dropped his head down, casting the shadow from his brow ridge once again. He squeezed his sore arms irritably and stared out at the undisturbed ashen surface.

“I knew lots of folks, kid,” he finally muttered. “An’ not all of them were worth knowing. Hell, most of them weren’t. Buncha tosspots, swindlers, lily-livers. An’ yeah, maybe Bettigan was one of ‘em. But who he was don’t really matter to me. Sure as hell ain’t the same guy now, an’ the only reason I gotta remember him is to know what gets his goat, an’ ‘cause of that we’re still alive. But I’m past thinkin’ about ‘im, he’s got a bullet in his back, thanks to your marksmanship, an’ I don’t have to think about him or his damned cowboy shtick again, I hope.”

“Okay…” Cuphead trailed off, confused. Annoyed, too, because confusion was probably Dice’s intention. He clearly wasn’t a fan of talking about his past. “I’m still curious, though.”

Dice’s lip curled in irritation. “Well, your curiosity ain’t my problem. An’ anyway, I’m pretty certain most of these stiffs’ brains’re too scrambled to even remember my name.”

Suddenly, the still water shifted under the rowboat, and Cuphead quickly got to his feet. Dice followed suit, and almost immediately after the two stood up the ashy water spilled over the edges of the boat. It seemed like something was swimming underneath them, making larger and larger waves as it drew closer to the surface. Cuphead’s mind quickly shot back to the last time he’d been in a rowboat with Mugs, and the ocean’s waves had unexpected almost sunk them. 

“Quick! Bail the water!” he shouted, taking off his hat and using it as a makeshift bucket. Dice opted to instead look over the edge of the boat, probably trying to make out their approaching foe before it reached them. “Get Mugs’s hat or something! If we sink into the lake –”

“Yeah, and then what? Whatever’s under there gets the jump on us! And by the looks of it, it’s big… here, I’ve got it.” He sloshed over and took Cuphead’s hat from him. “I’ll bail, and you be ready to shoot. You’re more heavily armed’n I am, got me?”

Cuphead nodded and took Dice’s place at the edge, charging his shot and standing somewhat in front of Mugman, just in case this weird lake creature decided to go for him first. Dusty tar-like bubbles formed on the shifting surface, and Cuphead raised his arm in anticipation. The wave before him rose higher, and higher, so high that it eclipsed boat in its shadow. Cuphead bit his lip; they’d fought against bigger things than this. Meaner too, probably… 

Then a massive, dull-colored hand shot out, grabbed Cuphead, and promptly yanked him off the boat. Cuphead’s first instinct was to fire his shot anyway, but the resulting orange fireball fizzled on impact with the greyish mass. A hole opened up towards the top of the mound, which then formed into a yellowed, thick-lipped smile as a positively grotesque laugh echoed in the dim flood cavern. If Dice sounded like he’d been smoking for decades, this creature sounded as if he’d had a lit cigar between his teeth since the day he was born. More equally unsettling features began taking shape around the mouth, namely a very familiar long nose and small, tasteless mustache. What was new were the wide shoulders, the suggestion of frivolous formal wear, a hat worn only by those partaking in that infamous vaguely defined “business” after dark. As this figure, somehow more inhuman than he was as a literal object, towered over the boat where Dice had frozen mid-bail, a pair of dim, languid yellow eyes poked their way out of his face. 

“Say that again, for the folks in the back.” 

The large, rough-knuckled hand tightened around Cuphead’s small frame. He had hardly even heard what his captor had said, his voice was so ungodly raspy.

“Come again?” Dice asked, and for the first time Cuphead noticed a disturbing stiffness in his stance as he spoke. Could this be the first time he’d ever seen Dice be afraid of something? Something cracked in Cuphead’s arm as the grip tightened.

“Tell me how no one remembers your name, King Dice. Or better yet…” He leaned in closer and another massive wave rocked the boat. “Why don’t you tell us why no one remembers mine?”

Dice looked as if all he wanted to do was fire another defensively witty retort, but as his eyes glanced over to Cuphead being forcefully squeezed until he broke, the boy got a hopefully accurate feeling that he was about to change tactics. Sure enough, Dice repositioned himself and put on his grin, looking remarkably smooth despite being shoeless with his soggy pants rolled up almost to his knees.

“Wheezy, baby, looks like you’ve been livin’ large,” he remarked, eyeing his former coworker. “I imagine havin’ your own lake property beats sittin’ in an ashtray!”

“Beats gettin’ ground to ash by my boss, too,” Wheezy replied quizzically, gritting his teeth in annoyance. “Or, ‘scuse me, _former_ boss.”

Dice’s grin only widened. “Well, glad to see you’re makin’ it well enough off on your own. What’s your level here all about, fraud? Treachery?”

Wheezy grinned in return. “Try wrath, smartass.” He shifted to the other side of the boat and the waves followed, carrying Dice higher and closer through no will of his own. “An’ you’re dense if you think I’mma let you pass through here. We’ve got too much history, you an’ I…” His hand plunged into the lake and pulled up a large, thick, already lit cigar. “And it’s been too long since you last got burned.”

Cuphead gasped for air as Wheezy’s fist finally loosened. “Wh-What are you talkin’ about?!” he sputtered, choking as opening his mouth came with the consequence of thick smoke coating his throat. He could taste the nicotine, and was already feeling a little sick. Wheezy grinned at his question.

“You mean you ain’t never heard of Dicey’s pouty li’l baby days?” he asked with a phlegmy snicker. Dice’s grip tightened on Cuphead’s hat, to the point that Cuphead decided that being crushed in Wheezy’s rough, tar-like hand was a much safer place to be. “Boy, have I got some an-ec-dotes for you!” He took the cigar from his mouth and blew out an absolutely monstrous cloud of smoke. “It all started with Dice was ‘bout your age, hell, maybe even ‘fore the casino, but my _brain’s_ a little too _scrambled_ to say for sure,” he growled, eyeing Dice for his earlier remarks. “He was an ornery little street rat, loved playin’ Robin Hood an’ shootin’ craps in the street. As per the former, a well-to-do man ‘a business such as myself was high on his priority list.” Another deep inhale and foggy exhale, this time through the nose. Cuphead struggled not to pass out. At least he could keep Wheezy distracted until his brother woke up. Not to mention that he’d never heard of anything Dice had done prior to his employment under the Devil, and frankly was morbidly curious.

“So I owned a fine chain ‘a hotels, gambling houses, clubs, somethin’ of the sort, an’ one day li’l Dicey an’ his posse figure they’ll storm the place, knock over some expensive baubles an’ trinkets, break a precious wine bottle or two. An’ they do, they wreck my place but good.” He’d spent half the cigar now, and Dice looked to be keeping himself very, very busy as this story went on. Cuphead could just make out the former manager snapping his fingers in front of the injured brother’s face, trying to wake him. “Yeah, yeah, then what happened?” Cuphead prompted desperately. Wheezy turned his yellow, sunken eyes directly to Cuphead for the first time, and Cuphead shuddered. They bore a stomach-churning resemblance to the milky, lifeless contents of Kahl’s padlocked icebox. 

“They all get away but one,” he continued. “And by gum… it’s the one that matters.” Another deadly exhale. “One’a my thugs grabs the li’l urchin by the arm, damn near twists it off tryin’ to escape.” There was more water in the boat, and Dice was frantically bailing it out as fast as he could manage. “My man brings ‘im to me, says he’s the ringleader, an’ I, well, I couldn’t really count on the cops for much of anything from where I was. So I figured he was young enough to learn the old fashioned way.” His cigar was almost spent, and he took it out of his mouth. His eyeballs slid back over to Dice and he grinned again.

“I had my man hold up his baby-face so he wouldn’t move, didn’t wanna sizzle his eye out after all…”

Cuphead’s mouth dropped open. “You mean you…”

Wheezy was still eyeballing Dice, working his arms to exhaustion as he threw out all the water he could with the two boys’ hats combined. “Held the burning tip ‘a my cigar to his forehead ‘til he screamed bloody murder. Little drip thought he could take it quietly…” He held out his smouldering cigar butt, and Cuphead’s stomach dropped as he realized he was aiming for the boat. “How I got to the casino is another story, but y’know, I ain’t never had the strength for long stories… but hey, guess you could say…”

“D-Dice! Look out!” Cuphead cried as loud as he could, despite his voice croaking beyond recognition.

“I gave ‘im his first pip!” Wheezy finished with a loud, hoarse cackle as he brought the burning tip down towards the boat. Dice realized what was coming for him and heaved Mugman over his shoulder before jumping over the edge of the boat. The butt came down a second later, and the dinky rowboat snapped in two. The large man’s grip loosened considerably and Cuphead scrambled out of his hand, landing in the murky water with a stinging splash. He opened his mouth underwater, a huge mistake, and began thrashing frantically as he came to a horrific conclusion.

He’d never learned to swim.

If bubbles rose from his mouth Cuphead didn’t see them, and was thoroughly convinced he’d never see again if he ever got out of the lake alive. His eyes had never stung so much. And the figures that he’d seen earlier, nearly motionless souls, were all around him, some trying to drag him up… 

Drag him up? _Wouldn’t they be trying to drown me?_ Cuphead thought, confused even in his terror. But as the ash finally cleared at least a little around him, he could see it: a glowing light. A light like an exit. 

The figures thrust him out of the water and he came up sputtering, barely able to see. He could, however, make out Dice swimming towards him, and putting him over his other shoulder. “Your brother’s awake, kid. We’ve got to lose Wheezy, before he does anything worse.”

“I saw the exit!” Cuphead spat, the ash from the lake choking him as he spoke. “It’s at the bottom of the lake!”

“The bottom?” Dice repeated. “Bettigan said it was always the top… unless… huh. Figures. Hold your breath, I’m going down.”

Cuphead obliged and Dice dived, back into the depths. They sank deeper and deeper, and Cuphead was getting woozy with all the ash and tar and ammonia floating in the water… he looked back, and swore he saw Wheezy’s large, looming face, following them all the way to the end. Frightened, he absentmindedly buried his face in his brother’s shirt, and just as he began to make out the bright light of the exit once more, water shot directly up his nose and knocked him out in the next second. Hopefully Dice would get through the exit before he drowned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please comment if you enjoyed, or would like to see more! thanks for much for reading, and have a lovely day!


	9. A Mirror Trick of the Eye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoa boy, here comes a whopper. i had a lot of fun writing this one, though had i more time i might polish it up in some places. nevertheless, enjoy!

_Lungs are burning, haven’t swam in years and the kids are on my back, everything’s gonna give if I don’t –_

Dice emerged gasping from the water, which he noticed was a lot cleaner now that they were out of Wheezy’s level. He also appeared to have come up from a well, rather than a lake, a smooth circular stone well. He hoisted the boys over the edge and onto the polished floor a couple feet below before climbing out himself. 

Mugman shifted in pain from the quick fall, and Dice checked the now iron-smelling shirt tied around the boy’s shoulder. He really did need a bandage or something, but there wasn’t much chance of that appearing any time soon. Dice gingerly unwrapped the shirt, plunged it back into the well and started scrubbing. The clear water darkened with blood after some seconds, and at this sight Dice removed it, wringing out the excess water. He dabbed the damp cloth at the boy’s still-bleeding wound, and tied it back around his shoulder as tight as he could. He sat the boy against the well and clapped his back, hard. Mugman’s eyes finally fluttered open as he sputtered loudly, water spilling out of his mouth and down his chest.

“Don’t worry, you ain’t dead,” Dice muttered, pressing two fingers against the boy’s throat to check his pulse. “Even if context says otherwise.”

“Hey… you stopped the bleeding,” Mugman murmured, staring at the ramshackle bandage made out of his shirt. 

“I’ve been shot before. All kinds of places,” Dice explained shortly. 

“No, I mean… why did you do it?” the boy asked. “I mean, I’m grateful you did, but I thought you didn’t –”

“Now ain’t the time, kid. Your brother’s still out, and I don’t got any damn clue where we even are,” Dice interrupted, finally taking a moment to scan their surroundings. The well they’d escaped through seemed the center of a two-way crossroads, with four hallways leading off in four directions out of the decently-sized room in which the well was housed. The floor was polished, almost marble-looking, and the crystal-like walls seemed to be emitting some sort of dim glow. The entire aesthetic of the place completely contrasted anything they’d seen thus far.

“Well… if we’re in the sixth level, that means…” Mugman trailed off in thought. “...Heresy, I think. Which means… crimes against nature?”

“Huh. That could apply to any of those sorry mugs,” Dice grumbled. “Though I gotta say, I’m hard-pressed to attach the garish look of this dump to any one of ‘em in particular…”

“No matter who’s in charge, we should stick together,” Mugman asserted. “Heresy’s also got something to do with trickery, which means we could get lost in here very easily.”

“Hm. If that’s true, then good point,” Dice replied grudgingly, trying unsuccessfully to get a sense of where any of the hallways led. “As soon as your brother wakes up, we’ll just pick a hall and see where we end up. If that ends up bein’ nowhere, we come back.”

Mugman nodded, then as he looked past Dice he froze. “H-Hey, where is Cuphead, anyhow?” he asked. Dice furrowed his brow. 

“The hell you talkin’ about, he’s right –” Dice started, before stopped mid-gesture. The spot where Cuphead had been lying unconscious a minute ago was now alarmingly empty, with not even a puddle of water left behind. “The little drip didn’t leave us behind, did he?” the former manager muttered darkly.

“Wh- No, Cuphead would never do that!” Mugman proclaimed. “He must’ve been delirious or something, just wandered off! Maybe he… maybe he saw something that wasn’t really there…” he theorized nervously, a growing fear in his eyes.

“Hey, hey, settle the hell down,” ordered Dice, clamping his hand on Mugman’s uninjured shoulder. “Whatever happened, we’ve gotta get outta this room. Feels like it’s closing in on us,” he added, noting that the surrounding walls felt just a little more imposing than they did before. “And if we keep our heads on our shoulders, we’ll find your brother eventually.”

Mugman struggled to slow his breathing, and Dice caught tears forming in his eyes. “Can you… can you promise me that?” he whispered nervously. The tall man pulled Mugman up by one of his hands, holding his own face in as neutral an expression as he could manage. “‘Course I can’t, kid. I don’t know anything more about this place than you do. This ain’t the Devil’s style, I’ll tell you that. But I’ll turn out sounding the slightest bit more credible if we try, get me?”

The injured boy stared for a moment, then smiled with a positively irritating look in his eyes. “That was a pretty heroic thing for you to say, Dice,” he remarked facetiously. 

“Then my hustlin’ skills ain’t so rusty,” the man returned, turning his face away. “Hopefully those empty words’ll work wonders on the both of us.”

–––

Cuphead didn’t know where he was going. It was dark, and he was cold and wet. His feet made wet slapping sounds on the floor with each step, and part of him really, really wanted to take them off so he could walk easier. But he could hear something, a low buzzing music stretching through his head, in one ear out the other and wound back through, a tune tying itself around his brain and tugging him forward. He wasn’t even sure it was real, but that thought only pushed his senses further away, until he didn’t hear the slapping of his shoes, and the wet shirt clinging to his torso seemed to disintegrate around him. 

The cold, dark hallway around him grew warmer as he walked on, and he squinted as a beam of light cast itself upon his face. The light was warm too, and Cuphead stopped walking as he realized it was sunlight. There was no way he could be outside, he was so deep underground, wasn’t he? He looked behind him, but the hallway was gone. In its place was a run-down alleyway, boxed in by a pair of wooden buildings. Cuphead could now hear vague bustling commotion from the end of it. The sky was above him, and for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to question why. He had no idea where he was, or if he was even on the Isle. 

“Hey, stupid! Ah’m ovuh heah!” Cuphead jolted at the sound of an unfamiliar voice with a heavy twang of an accent. He turned slowly to see a boy about his age poking his head around the corner of the building to his right, beckoning him impatiently. “C’mon, yoh wastin’ mah time!” he hissed through his teeth. Unnerved by the boy’s impatience, Cuphead hastily ran to the shaded end of the alleyway. As soon as he got close, the boy grabbed his arm and yanked him around the corner. 

“Hey! What was that for?!” Cuphead demanded. The boy jammed two fingers against Cuphead’s lips. 

“No talkin’, not out heah,” he ordered, a cold look in his eyes. Cuphead bit his lip and nodded without thinking. The boy wasn’t much taller than him, and the drawl in his words took a lot of the edge out of his voice, but his needle-gaze and iron grip more than compensated. He looked over Cuphead’s shoulder quickly, then turned to a slanted pair of doors in the ground with a rusty padlock keeping them shut. Aftering fishing around in his dull-colored pants he pulled out a mangled hairpin, and jimmied it in the keyhole for some seconds until the lock popped open with a click.

“Uh, ‘scuse me,” Cuphead whispered carefully. “But what exactly am I doing here?” The boy stopped partway through pulling the doors open. His eyes bore into Cuphead’s quizzically.

“Yuh really can’t keep a thought in yoh head fuh more’n a minute, can yuh?” He opened the doors, revealed a set of stairs leading down into a cellar of some sort. “Yoh heah so ah can explain what the hell we’re doin’ t’morrah mornin’.”

“What?” asked Cuphead, confused out of his mind. Was he supposed to know what they were doing?

“Puh. If yuh wasn’t so quick on yoh feet I’da picked yoh pocket ages ago an’ that’d be the end of it. But as it stands, Ah can’t do this job without yuh. So go on down ‘fore I get touchy.”

_He’s already pretty touchy…_ Cuphead wanted to say, but thought better of it. He started on down the dusty stairs, pushed forward by the mysterious kid before he had a chance to wonder where they were going.

–––

“Hey, the hall’s starting to brighten up a bit,” Mugman noticed as he and Dice advanced down the polished corridor.

“Hm. Wonder how. Don’t see any lights,” Dice muttered. It was deadly quiet around them, with their footsteps being the only noise they could hear. They echoed a little, the patter of Dice’s bare soles and the wet thumping of Mugman’s shoes. 

“...You don’t reckon we’re lost, do you?” Mugman asked tentatively, glancing over his shoulder. Dice did the same and saw that while the path before them was growing brighter, what they’d left behind them was progressively being engulfed in darkness.

“Well, it doesn’t seem we’ve got anywhere else to go,” Dice answered uncertainly. “In any case, we should keep moving. I don’t imagine things’ll get better if that darkness catches up with us.” Mugman nodded wordlessly and they continued walking, maybe a little faster this time.

“...Hey, Dice?”

Dice tensed. “What is it, kid?” he asked tensely, expecting some kind of personal question.

“D’you think we could, uh, hold hands or something?” asked Mugman. Dice didn’t have a chance to stop his eyes from narrowing in discomfort. “Now why would we do something like that?” he returned slowly, gritting his teeth defensively. 

“Oh, I’m not trying to–! I was just thinking, Cuphead just disappeared right under our noses. We didn’t even hear him leave, or get taken, or whatever,” the boy recalled disjointedly. “So maybe, with this weird darkness coming up behind us, and… and whatever’s up ahead, the same thing could happen to one of us,” he reasoned. “If we were holding hands, or… or tethered together in some way, we’d know if one of us was gone.”

“Mm-hmm,” Dice muttered, still struggling to stay in control of himself. “You’ve got a point, I’ll admit it.” They walked a few seconds in silence, and _cripes, now he’s staring at me, I don’t wanna hold your stupid hand…_

“...All right then. But you’re only holding my shirt sleeve, got it?” he asked, returning Mugman’s inquisitive stare with one of his own. Mugman smiled and nodded. “That’ll do just fine, I think,” he agreed. Dice unrolled his damp sleeve all the way down and Mugman took hold of the cuff. The former manager groaned inwardly as they kept walking, now with his hand out and hanging limply between them. The sooner they were out of this damned maze, the better. 

As they kept on, Dice couldn’t help but feel like the echo of their footsteps was getting louder, longer, more resounding. He looked up and started involuntarily: the ceiling was suddenly extremely high. “The walls are changing…” Mugman trailed off. “They’re getting full of –”  
“Mirrors?” Dice cut him off in confusion. Indeed, the towering walls on either side of them were now featuring square and rectangular mirrors of varying sizes hung in an apparently random formation. They grew more numerous and closer together the further Mugman and Dice progressed, and as the former manager kept staring he realized that not all of them reflected things normally. A good number of them warped his face and body as he walked past, or even made him appear upside down. The bizarreness of it put him in mind of a cheap carnival funhouse. “It’s like one of those weird pop-up haunted houses at the fair,” the boy beside him remarked, evidently thinking the same. Dice almost said as much until the air was taken right out of him by one of his reflections. A quick glance, a self he hadn’t seen for such a long time…

“Dice, are you o….kay…” Mugman’s voice grew muffled by a strange ringing tone in Dice’s ears. He felt like he’d left his mind for a moment, and found that he could hardly move his feet anymore. He’d stopped, in front of a full-length mirror, and in the mirror was a place. A familiar place. The ringing was coming from there, and he couldn’t leave it alone, he needing to know where it was coming from…

Suddenly his heart jumped as he felt his arm being pulled. He tore himself away to see Mugman also staring at a mirror, but what he was looking at Dice had no idea. “Mugs…” he murmured, feeling every letter of the boy’s nickname roll off his tongue in slow motion. His feet started moving towards the mirror, and as Mugman began to do the same he silently let go of Dice’s sleeve. An alarm went off in Dice’s head and he jerked himself around, reaching out and seizing the boy’s hand as tight as he could, but he wasn’t strong enough, his fingers felt like they were melting. He let his head swing back to find himself half submerged in the mirror up to his waist, and before he could register that the walls had somehow become his floor and ceiling he fell through the shimmering surface.

–––

Cuphead took small careful steps forward once he reached the bottom of the steps, not wanting to run into anything and set off his strange… host? Boss? Partner? Whoever he was, he was busying himself with lighting the candles in a chandelier hung from the low ceiling, an easy task since Cuphead could probably touch the ceiling if he jumped high enough. As the room grew less dark Cuphead took in its odd furnishings, which included a keg of some kind of alcohol, a low table with a map of some kind laid out on it, and a small rugged-looking mattress in the corner.

“This where you live?” he asked. The boy took out an oil lamp and lit it before putting it on the table. “Foh now. Don’t go tellin’ nobody, or they gonna find _yoh_ body, get me?”

Cuphead gulped down the pit in his throat. “Uh, yeah, I’ll uh, keep quiet.”

“Good plan.” He went over to the keg and picked up a pair of wooden mugs. “Take a seat,” he implored as he filled them with whatever was in the keg. “The floor don’t bite. Unless there’s a critter oh two hidin’ in the duht.”

Cuphead reluctantly obliged, deciding that he’d play along with whatever this kid had in mind for the time being. Maybe the meaning of all of this would become clear eventually.

“Heah.” A mug was thrust into his hands and the boy sat across from him. “Drink it down, it ain’t easy tuh nab a whole keg from them chumps who run the bar.”

“You stole it?” Cuphead couldn’t help but ask. The boy quirked an eyebrow and chugged down half his drink. “What, yuh think Ah jus’ shuffled on in an’ asked ‘em nahcely? Who the hell d’yuh think Ah am?”

“I-I dunno…” Cuphead stammered, nervously drinking from his mug so the kid didn’t get even snappier.

“Hm, we don’t got tahm foh games, Chimes,” the boy scoffed, turning his attention to the map on the table. “We only got one shot at this, an’ failin’ means a world’a hurt.”

“Ch-Chimes?” Cuphead repeated, almost dropping his mug. The boy procured a quill pen and licked the nib impatiently. “Thas you, if you feelin’ like someone else now’s the tahm tuh say somethin’. I ain’t lettin’ this operation fall apaht ‘cause’a you bein’ indecisive about yoh goddamned fake name.”

“B-But I – uh, if I’m Chimes then –” Cuphead stumbled over his words.

“Then nothin’, least keep it foh this job. Makes mah life easiuh, an’ if this goes well then it’ll be easy foh you too.”

He dipped the pen in a stained inkwell to fill it up, and Cuphead couldn’t stop staring at him, with so many thoughts running through his head. If this kid seemed to think Cuphead was Chimes, like former-casino-staff-member Chimes, then who was he? He didn’t look like anyone they’d seen yet, his skin was dark, and his eyes were – 

_His eyes were green._

That’s why Cuphead found himself freezing in the kid’s line of sight, even in the dimly lit cellar his eyes flickered with a steely jade fire. There was only one person he’d ever known to have such noticeable flare in his expression, and that was…

“D-Dice?” The kid looked up from the map in annoyance.

“What? Yuh got somethin’ tuh say?”

Cuphead squeezed the mug between his hands, frozen in a mix of fear, bafflement and morbid curiosity. “I… No, I don’t,” he mumbled quietly.

“Ahlright then. Now…” he raised the quill pen and pointed the coarse feathery end at Cuphead. “Listen close an’ listen hahd, ‘cause Ah’m only gonna say this once.”

–––

Dice was back in the casino. He knew it instantly, knew its sounds and its colors. Moreover, he knew his old room when he saw it. Extravagant, neat, his favorite record running on the phonograph. Nothing but instrumentals for him to sing to when he couldn’t sleep. But no one needed to know that part. 

Judging by the noise outside the door, it was just getting to the busy hours on the floor. Usually this was the time he went out to seek potential “clients” for his boss. Former boss, Dice reminded himself. He was wearing his old suit, a self-appointed uniform really, which put him off a bit. Was he in… some kind of memory? If that was the case…

Dice raised his gloved hands to his face and felt out a flat surface, sharp corners at the end of every side. His stomach turned a little, and he forced out a breath. “It’s fine,” he muttered to himself. “Just like the kid said. Trickery. Just…” He started walking towards his door. “Gotta find a way outta here.”

He opened the large, ornate door and the sound on the other side of it immediately grew five times as loud. He had to admit, the jazzy music pouring through the air did make him feel a tad nostalgic. As he walked onto the floor everyone readily made a path for him to pass, and he easily assumed his practiced posture to let them know that was the correct decision. He glanced around at the craps table, slots, roulette wheels, seeing if he could spot anything out of place. A way out would yield a break in the illusion, he assumed. But everything appeared just as it had in his days as manager, and honestly he was starting to feel a little too comfortable. 

That was until his eyes brushed over the bar several feet away. He stopped his smooth strides, and locked onto a very familiar man hunched over on his barstool. 

–––

Mugman didn’t quite know how, but he was now in a ramshackle hospital of sorts. It was in some kind of tent, and beside him was a man he’d never seen before, though he did look the slightest bit familiar. He was in some kind of army uniform, and wore a metal helmet with a dent in it. There were many more just as haggard men lying on cots around him, many with far worse injuries than Mugman had. 

“C’mon, get yourself on the cot, let me have a look at the damage,” the man implored gently, guiding Mugman onto an empty cot. 

“Um, pardon, but where are we?” asked Mugman tentatively as the soldier unwrapped the shirt from his shoulder. He chuckled. 

“We’re in Hell, my boy, in Hell. Otherwise known as the Western front,” he explained coyly, taking a pair of metal tweezers from the bedside table. “Try not to flinch, son.”

“Elder Kettle told me about something like that once…” Mugman muttered. “It’s from the War, isn’t it?”

“From? Son, it _is_ the War! Golly, that bullet must have grazed your brain!” he chuckled. Mugman clenched his teeth as he felt the cold tweezers poke into his skin and seize something tiny. 

“Wh-What are you doing?” he asked, not wanting to look. 

“Bullets are made of metal, private. When metal flies at your shoulder at the speed of sound, it tends to splinter on impact,” he explained, holding up the reddened instrument. Held between the tweezers was a small piece of metal. Mugman shuddered. “So the bullet’s still inside me?” he asked in horror. 

“The shrapnel left by the bullet. But yes, it is. Won’t be for long, though, not if you stay still,” the man added with a smirk, dropping the piece of shrapnel onto a metal tray beside the cot. Mugman nodded, still unsure why this man was acting like they knew each other, and more importantly what he was doing in the middle of the Great War. 

–––

“Good evening, sir,” said King Dice smoothly as he approached the bar. The man looked up lazily, and it was immediately evident that he was completely hammered. 

“Heyyy, you’ve… you got a dice for a head, that’s… must be quite a conversation piece,” he rambled, chuckling at his own remark. It was all coming back to him. 

“I’d say it suits the job,” Dice replied, remembering more and more of the interaction that was about to play out. “But I guess anything’s worth mentioning when you’ve got drink in ya.”

The man chuckled and downed more of his drink. “Golly gosh, man, that’s the truth, you know, I’ve been looking for something pointless to mention, I… suppose that’s what I came for,” he explained disjointedly, scratching at his unkempt mustache. “Cause I’m… in the War, you know. On leave now, but…”

“Really?” Dice asked, interrupting at the right time. “You must be real tuckered out, hmm?”

“Ha haaa, you aren’t wrong. Though I’m maybe a mite depressed too. Lost… a lotta friends…”

“Well, the drink’ll help plenty. But you know,” Dice added, sitting down. “If you’re really missin’ those friends of yours, the boss could really pull some strings for the right price.”

“It’s no use, there’s… the world’s got a balance, you know, you can’t try to cheat it unless you’re ready to lose somethin’ yourself, and, well, I don’t think the world could do without this fella right here!” he drunkenly proclaimed, jabbing a thumb at his own chest. “I practically raised those poor young fellas who got themselves drafted, would’ve kicked the bucket a long time ago if I hadn’t taught them a thing or two!”  
“Ah, a teacher, are we?” Dice prompted as another drink was placed in front of the man. He shrugged and, oddly enough, didn’t take the drink. That was new. 

“No, but you could be,” he replied dryly, his tone changing completely. He still sounded off, but something had definitely shifted. Then he put his hand on Dice’s sleeve, who jumped at the contact. “They’ve given you so many chances,” he continued, still not looking at Dice. 

“The hell are you talkin’ about?” Dice questioned, yanking his sleeve out of the man’s grip. Finally his eyes slid back over to meet the manager’s, and Dice saw a different light in them. A steadier one, one he wouldn’t have seen until much later. “Kettle, you’re–“

“Hey, don’t jump ahead,” he interrupted, shooting Dice a sudden meaningful look. “I’ve never heard that name in my life.”

–––

“That’ll be the last piece of metal. Now just hold out your arm and I’ll wrap it up for you.” Mugman stuck out his arm with a nod, having resigned himself to whatever strange memory he’d gotten stuck in. “Atta boy, Mugs, just get it over with.”

Mugman tensed at that. “How do you know my name?” he asked. The soldier looked him quizzically. 

“I’ve been showing you the ropes for years, son,” he chuckled. “But if you aren’t comfortable with a nickname –“

“No, I mean, my name is Mugman, I don’t know how you would know who I –“

Suddenly, an explosion shook the tent around them and the ground under them. The soldier looked around, seemingly at nothing, then just returned to wrapping up Mugman’s arm, speeding up the process. 

“What was that?” Mugman asked frantically, hoping that he couldn’t actually get hurt in these memories. 

“Don’t pay it any mind, not yet. Now just a little longer… there we go!” he proclaimed. “All fixed. Now where did I…” 

After taking a box out from under the cot, the man provided a large square mirror about the size of Mugman’s head. Another explosion sounded outside, this one even louder than before. 

“Alright, how’d I do?” He held up the mirror, and Mugman turned until he could see the bandage. A little blood could still be seen soaking through, but it looked a whole lot better than what he had before. 

“Just swell, thanks, mister, uh…” he trailed off confusedly. 

“Kettle,” replied the soldier with a quizzical half-smile. Mugman froze, and his mouth fell open speechlessly. But before he could say anything, do anything, a third explosion shook the tent so hard it started coming down, and in the next few seconds Mugman felt a helmet being shoved onto his head, and soon after was pushed headfirst into the mirror, and out of the memory. 

Mugman was brought out of his shock by his face colliding with the cold floor on the other side of the mirror, and he realized that he was back in the strange funhouse-maze. Though now he appeared to be in a circular room, with no exit doorways. The wall was simply plastered in mirrors upon mirrors, all of varying shapes and sizes. Mugman stood and looked around confusedly, trying to discern how he could possibly escape other than just guessing at what mirrors to go through. But in the next second his thought process was interrupted by a deafening yet high voice reverberating off the walls around him.

“WHO RUINED THE ILLUSION?!”

Mugman whipped his head around, trying to find the source of the voice, but couldn’t see anyone. It seemed, however, that the voice wasn’t talking to him.

“IT WAS AN AIRTIGHT EFFECT, EVERY PIECE FIT PERFECTLY! AND YET –”

“Hey, excuse me!” Mugman interrupted as loud as he could muster, despite the room’s acoustics somehow drowning out his voice. “Could you maybe, uh, talk quieter?” A pause followed.

“Well, well, well, I didn’t think this… blind spot would take you straight to the end.” The mirrors in front of Mugman warped until their image changed to a large, yellow eye with deep lines under it. The other mirrors changed around it, though rather than filling in a defined form they showed parts, pieces of a man’s face and shoulders, though they didn’t connect smoothly between the mirrors in the slightest. The boy could at least discern that he was wearing a blue coat with oversized shoulder pads, a bright red bowtie, and a shining black top hat.

“You’re… the magician, right?” he asked tentatively. Had there been a magician? The eyes rolled.

“Of course, the one to be sent before me had to be the fool of a boy who can’t even remember my name! Again, I felt so very focused a minute prior, and now… hmm, well, it isn’t any of your business.” The room darkened and Mugman could hear some kind of electrical crackling. “All I have to do now is keep you here. In this room with no exits, watching you sit here until you give up.” A mouth situated in a long oval mirror turned up into a grin, showing off the still very obscured figure’s large front teeth. 

“I’m not gonna give up until you tell me what you’ve done with Cuphead and Dice!” Mugman returned defiantly. The strange man laughed hysterically. “And what will you do?! As far as you’re concerned, I’m invincible! Noncorporeal, even!”

“Well…” Mugman’s fingertip glowed blue. “Maybe you’re connected to those mirrors. I couldn’t see you earlier, and there’s nowhere else you could be –”

“OH, YE OF A NARROW MIND!” the magician boomed. “I could be everywhere, I could be nowhere! I could be right behind you for all you know!”

Mugman furrowed his brow. “Well, there’s no reason for me to believe you…”

“Oh, and I wouldn’t shatter my mirrors if I were you. Aside from the bad luck, they’re all that’s holding this place together,” he added with a smarmy wink. Mugman quirked an eyebrow in annoyance. “What do you mean by that?” he asked. An irritated frown.

“All these questions, they’re so very pointless. They’re not even the questions you should be asking… oh, no, stop right there! I see you about to ask another,” he ordered, a hand in another mirror pointing a cheap-looking wandin Mugman’s direction. “Perhaps after you’ve spent an eternity in this room, you will have better questions to –”

The man’s voice seemed to be cut off by the mirror’s warping again, though a few seconds later Mugman still heard it. It was further away this time, but getting louder… Then he heard a loud thump behind him, and realized it had been a scream. He turned around to see the same magician that had just been gloating at him, though he was noticeably smaller and more tangible than he had previously appeared.

“Hey kid!” Mugman looked around frantically. 

“Dice?!” he called.

“I’m up here, way above the floor. That little pain in the neck was hiding up here, talkin’ through his stupid mirror tricks.”

“Why – You haven’t changed a bit, you-you-you uneducated silver-tongue!” the man wheezed from the floor, evidently having had the wind knocked out of him by the fall. “I’ve spent years perfecting my craft, and you’ve never once hesitated to dismiss it as-as-as naught but _frippery!_ ”

“Can it, Pocus. Where’s the other kid,” Dice demanded dryly. “Don’t got nowhere to run, so bring ‘im back.”

The magician made a move for one of the mirrors, but Mugman was quick to catch him in the back with a quick shot. “You burned a hole in my coat!” he shrieked furiously.

“I’ll do more than that if you don’t bring back my brother,” replied the boy in what he hoped came across as a serious tone. The former staff member rolled his eyes and waved his hands in a seemingly random fashion. Cuphead very suddenly shot out of the mirror beside him, also landing on his face as his brother had. The second Mugman’s brother hit the floor, the magician took off out of the mirror he’d attempted to escape through earlier. 

“Leave it, we’ve gotta get outta here before he puts us in some other kinda memory-stupor.” A long, black cord fell from the void of a ceiling. “Grab on, I’ll pull you up. Freak’s gotta all kinds of cords doing nothing up here. Oh, and the exit’s here, too.”

“Well, you could’ve led with that!” Mugman exclaimed, running over to the cord. Cuphead followed, though noticeably less enthusiastic than his brother. “Cuphead, are you okay? Did that guy make you see a strange… memory-illusion too?” Mugman asked.

“...Yeah,” he said slowly, grabbing hold of the cord. “Wasn’t nothing, uh… yeah. We can talk later.”

“...Okay,” Mugman answered, unsure of why his brother was suddenly being so secretive. “Maybe when we’re done in this level? Because I’ve got some things to tell you, too, from what I saw…”

“Sure.” The brothers began rising upward on the cord, and Mugman could think of nothing besides what Cuphead could possibly want to keep from him. Whatever it was, it was affecting him so much that he hadn’t even noticed that Mugman had acquired a different hat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oooh new tension hooray! next chapter, per story structure, will be a little intermission breather with characters who are not out main three. so be hyped for some other boss banter, as well as the ever-enjoyable kettle-devil back and forth. thanks for reading, and have a lovely day!


	10. A Pit in the Throat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> posting from my phone because my mouse decided to die on me, yayyy. sorry for the delay and i hope you all enjoy intermission number two!

“Funny how they made it out so easy.”

“Hm?” Kettle asked, turning towards his boss. The Devil’s forked tongue flicked out and ran along his upper lip thoughtfully. “If I recall, we figured trapping the boys in an ‘endless maze of mirrors and memories’ would be a tad more effective,” he reminded his subordinate dryly. “And yet, you seemed quite keen on patchin’ the hole in the blue boy’s shoulder.”

Kettle’s eyebrows went up a little, but he just shrugged. “I’m not sure what to tell you, boss. I couldn’t get in my own head.”

“You put yourself in there,” the Devil replied slowly, taking an ornate gold ring off his desk and spinning it around on his claw absentmindedly. “And you’re sayin’ you had no control over yourself.”

His new manager was silent. For a strangely long time, he was silent. Then he said, “Couldn’t have that kid stay injured. Hell, couldn’t have the three of them trapped in there too long. They’ve still got the worst of the worst to face, and I know you want to see that,” he pointed out. “I certainly do.”

The Devil put the ring back on the table and narrowed his eyes at his latest recruit. There was a strain in what he was saying, an inflection that hadn’t been present before. “Yeah, I s’pose I can’t pass up the chance to see every one of my old goons beat ‘em to a pulp,” he pretended to concede, even leaning back in his chair to be more convincing. 

“See, it’s more fun this way,” the kettle man responded almost immediately, his voice no longer sounding so forced. The Devil couldn’t help but grin. _You’re louder than I thought, huh…_

“Y’sound a little throaty, Kettle. Comin’ down with something?” he asked nonchalantly. 

“Just a bit tight, boss,” the other man admitted, trying to feel around where his throat would be. “Nothing to write home about, you know?”

“Should have a drink. Might loosen that throat of yours up a bit,” The Devil suggested, snapping his fingers to summon one of his imps. It arrived with a metal tray bearing a bottle of liquor and a glass. The Devil filled the glass, slid it over towards Kettle, and proceeded to down the rest of the alcohol straight from the bottle. 

“Sure, boss, sure,” Kettle muttered, taking quick sips and trying far too hard to look controlled. The Devil supposed he hadn’t trained composure into him the same way he had his predecessor. It was a little too easy to read him, really. The Devil grunted and tossed the bottle away, hearing it shatter behind him. 

“So, looks like you’re far ahead in the running,” he grumbled conversationally. “Anything to say about that?”

“Oh, well…” his new manager murmured, putting down his glass. “I suppose I’m happy to be beating you, but… perhaps I shouldn’t be? Because, well, if I won the bet, then you would have to… I feel pretty pleased with myself,” he finished abruptly. _Uhuh._ The Devil thumbed through a stack of betting slips, deep in thought. 

“Seems to me you feel no satisfaction,” he muttered. 

“… No, sir, it seems I don’t.”

“Why is that, Kettle? Just curious,” he added somewhat facetiously. The other man tensed. There was something going on, something in his eyes, and the Devil found himself very intrigued by the show. “It’s alright, you don’t gotta answer if it’s gonna strangle you.” He opened a few drawers in his desk, slowly conjuring the object he was expecting to find. These kinds of things usually came to him by this point… ah, there it was. The horned demon triumphantly pulled a silver quarter-sized coin from the drawer of his desk. 

“Get a load of this, Kettle old boy,” he implored with a considerable amount of snark in his voice. He showed both sides: one, a low-relief picture of a teacup and pair of dice, and the other, the etched silhouette of a human person. At seeing both views, Kettle’s face finally showed a flicker of unconflicted emotion: shock, which quickly turned to a bitter sneer. 

“For shame, boss! That is cheating of the highest degree!” he protested. The Devil grinned; just the reaction he’d wanted. 

“You wanna feel satisfied, I’ll make you feel satisfied!” the Devil proclaimed as he set the coin spinning on its edge. “Bets ain’t no fun without risk, an’ sometimes you’ve got to cheat to have it! Especially if someone else is cheating their way out of it,” he added slyly. Kettle didn’t react to that. The Devil’s upping the ante had snapped him out of it.

“Alright, I see your game, boss. I assume you aren’t planning on mitigating the difficulty of the final levels, either?” he asked, quirking an eyebrow facetiously. The Devil only grinned in return. “That’s what I thought. So when’s this coin going to up and decide how it’ll land?” Kettle remarked, eyes dwindling to the still-spinning coin. The Devil’s clawed finger came down upon it, bring its momentum to a sudden stop.

“When I say it does.”

–––

“You crossing something off your bucket list today?”

“Huh?” asked Moe, twisting to see where the jab had come from. The top of a large woven sunhat poking up two seats behind them gave him his answer. “Just what’s that s’posed to mean, Carnation?”

“I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen you outside that rickety fence, and half of them were events you were dragged to,” Cagney recalled dryly. “I see your friend every now and then, but –”

“Well, add this to the ‘dragged to’ collection, ‘cause I ain’t here of my own volition,” Moe returned. He heard Weepy sigh next to him. He wasn’t sure why he felt the need to act so aloof. Maybe to get Cagney to stop talking to him. Which was a rare occurrence in itself.

“Gosh, now I see why you never leave,” the gardener muttered, followed by some shuffling noises. “It’s quite clear that you absolutely despise the outside world.”

“I leave plenty,” Moe groaned. “I just don’t go far. Is that a crime?” He wanted to say that Cagney was one to talk, since he used to be something of a shut-in himself, but he didn’t want to rile him. Despite how he had changed.

“I suppose not, but it isn’t very exciting. Not that you _need_ excitement…” Moe looked over to find that the small man had carefully moved himself and his effects to the seat across from Moe and Weepy, and Moe could only assume he did so to make conversing easier.

“Since when d’you wanna talk?” he questioned, narrowing his eyes in suspicion. Admittedly, he hadn’t actually seen Cagney in some time, but this was quite an anomaly, even with the hushed whispers Moe had caught of the gardener’s apparently kinder disposition before making his contract.

“I want to know what you’re doing on the train. I’m admittedly a tad curious. Is that a crime?” Cagney added mockingly. Moe felt a strange tenseness in his jaw. Cagney wasn’t exactly sounding strange, but there were several unfortunately familiar notes in his voice that Moe could easily recall from several years ago, during a time he and the gardener had previously agreed to mutually forget about. Before he could come up with a response out of the confused annoyance in his head, Weepy spoke up next to him. “We’re trying to find the cups! Er, actually, have you seen them by any chance?” 

Cagney adopted a quizzical expression. “Why on earth would you be looking for them?”

Weepy bit his lip and looked away forlornly. “Well, their grandfather… passed, just the other day –”

“Kettle’s gone?” Cagney interrupted. Weepy nodded, and the gardener looked oddly shaken. Moe couldn’t imagine what kind of connection he could have had with the kettle, but opted to keep silent. “Didn’t hear about it. Wasn’t a bad guy. Little irresponsible, but… anyway, he kicked the bucket, what about it?”

Weepy continued. “We went to their home the next day, to see how they were holding up, and everything was in disarray. They were gone, too. We… or, _I_ at least…” he shot a look at Moe, “am quite worried about them. We thought perhaps they might have gone to the third isle. Not a bad place to start looking, anyway.”

“Suppose you’re not wrong. But what could they possibly be out there doing?” Cagney pointed out. “They’re kids, might’ve gone off to forget about their troubles, or at least to figure out what to do now that… well, they don’t have anyone.”

“Could be tryin’ to make a deal,” Moe suggested quietly. The other two said nothing in reply at first, and the farmer couldn’t help but wonder why contracts were such a touchy subject a year after they’d been rendered null. 

“They couldn’t possibly be that stupid,” Cagney muttered, staring into his basket in thought. “Not that I thought they were all that smart to begin with… and you think you could stop them from doing something like that? It took them a damn long time to get us out of that headspace even after we’d had those stupid things taken away. I can’t imagine the two of you building up a strong enough argument when they’ve got what they want right in front of them.”

Weepy frowned. “Well, I don’t think they thought they could get _us_ out of our binds at first –”

“Excuse me… gentlemen…” The train ghost floated between the farmers and Cagney. “We’ve arrived at isle three…”

 

“Oh! Goodness, yes.” Moe got out of the seat, followed by Weepy, and all three men stepped off the train and into the third isle.

“I’d try Werman’s,” Cagney said suddenly.

“Hmm?” asked Weepy.

“Werman’s. The cups go over there pretty often. They talk to those pirates, and… I suppose, tease Dice? I’ll never understand why they like pestering him so much,” he huffed, rolling his eyes.

“Oh! I suppose they do, don’t they…” Weepy recalled. “Thank you!”

He and Moe began walking up the winding street that led to Werner’s small house, and curiously enough Cagney seemed to be following them. Moe shot a look over his shoulder at the small man, who scowled a little.

“What? I’m going there too. I trim his yard, you know.”

–––

“Ze cups? I see.,, you vill have to come in and listen for a little.”

Werner opened his front door wider and the farmers entered, Cagney pushing past them rather briskly towards the back door at the opposite end of the house. His two remaining guests took a seat on the old, scratched-up couch. Werner awkwardly squeezed in on the end, not really wanting to “present” what he had to say by standing in front of them.

“So you know what happened to them?” Weepy prompted, looking worried as usual.. “Is it anything… terrible?”

Werner’s gaze involuntarily dwindled to a very interesting spot on the coffee table. He was never very good at being anything but blunt when speaking in English.

“Ze cups are not cups anymore,” he finally said shortly. “Zey said zey voke up vone day, and vere all of a sudden human.”

The faces his guests made in reaction told him he hadn’t been very elegant in his delivery. Either that, or the news was just that shocking. The unfamiliar man’s eyebrows knit together in incredulity, and Weepy looked as if he had seen a ghost. “That… doesn’t make any sense,” Weepy murmured, his widened eyes also seeming to find that coffee table spot. Werner got distracted a moment as he irritatedly realized that Dice had put out a cigarette there. “They just… changed?”

Werner snapped back. “Oh, _ja_ , Dice said it vas some kind of… extra contract zing. And zey left to ask _der Teufel_ vhy he had done it. And also to see vhy he has returned, I suppose.”

“To make a contract, obviously.” The three turned their heads to find the gardener listening in from the back door. Werner found it somewhat amused that he had opted to conceal his reaction to the cups’, or rather, the brothers’ predicament. “Or something like that. He wants them still, it’s just a matter of vengeance at this point.”

“And what’ll he do once he’s got ‘em…” muttered the man Werner had never met. “Somethin’ tells me he won’t pack up and leave.” Werner nodded. He had grown a little concerned in the past few hours, as the boys still hadn’t returned. There was certainly a way to figure out what had happened to them, but by the silence in the room it was clear no one fancied proposing it aloud. Werner sighed; he supposed he had to do it. 

“Ve could… go see vat has happened in ze casino…” he mentioned slowly. The other three instantly made various forms of a grimace in response. “I know it is ze last place any of us vant to go. But if zere is a chance zat ze Devil may become more… aggressive, in forcing our souls under his will, zen we cannot simply do nozing. And you think ve vould be veak to ze Devil’s vhims, his _gaukelei_ , but I vould argue ve are all different people today, yes?” He made sure to eye Cagney when getting to that point, as there was no one he’d ever seen change so much over the course of a year or so. The gardener caught his look and sighed.

“I suppose I can’t argue with that,” he muttered. “But even so. If we were to just mosey on over there, it’d just be the four of us. That’s hardly a substantial match for whatever the Devil may have up his sleeve.”

“Well…” Weepy murmured. “There _is_ a fix for that.”

“Oh, no,” muttered the other farmer. “I am _not_ doing this. I barely even know any of the others.”

“Come on, Moe,” urged Weepy. “If everyone sees that even _you_ care to stop the Devil from making things worse, they’ll have no excuse not to join us! You do want to stop the Devil, don’t you?”

Moe stared into his companion’s eyes for a some seconds, then sighed as Cagney had a few minutes prior. “Fine. I do want that Devil to quit jerking everyone’s chain, but this I’m doing for you.”

“Wonderful!” Weepy exclaimed, smiling. Werner couldn’t wrap his head around how the pudgy man could be so jovial in such grave circumstances. Moe agreeing to their imminent course of action had to be quite out of the ordinary. The veteran of course couldn’t confirm that; he had never met the other farmer before today.

–––

“Huh, wouldja look at that, Kettle,” the Devil spoke up, gesturing to his cloud of cigar smoke. “It’s some of those finks I got cheated by.”

Kettle looked into the unconventional viewing window and watched as one of those farmers and that puny gardener approached the front door of the tower in the second isle. “What are they up to?” he asked. The Devil couldn’t tell if his new manager recognized his old debtors or not. 

“Looks like they’re askin’ their neighbors for somethin’. Somethin’ important, by the looks of things,” the Devil noted. The stuttering beanpole had opened the door, and after some words were exchanged he put a hand to his mouth in shock, fear, or even concern. The Devil blew out a new cloud, which showed another of the farmers, the baby-faced one, and the vet with the accent in the city junkyard, chatting up the little poindexter about what looked like the same thing, though the scientist looked more intrigued then concerned. Dice had been crashing at the vet’s place since the Devil kicked him out, so it could be they were talking about…

“Boss? Everything good?” The Devil snapped out of his thoughts and cleared the smoke clouds with a wave of his hand.

“Eh, looks like we’ll be getting a few tough guests later. Nothin’ my new manager can’t handle, right?” he asked with a sardonic grin. Kettle smoothly folded his hands on the desktop and returned the expression.

“You can count on me, boss.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much for your patience and support! i’ll see you all back here the wednesday after next week! :)


	11. Won by a Pip

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and we're back in hell! get ready for things to get crazy, because i'm pulling out all the stops in these ones. thanks for your patience as per usual, and enjoy!

_I think this kind of place was where Elder Kettle used to gamble…_

This was the only unfortunate association Mugman could make with where they’d entered into, though it did put him in mind of the staff member it was likely attached to. The exit to Hopus’s level had led to a wide balcony of some kind, with ornate metal rails fenced around a polished white wooden platform. A light blue, almost teal awning was pulled over the top of it, and the light that refracted onto the three carried some of the cool hue with it. From this limited view, the new level resembled the essence of “Hell” about as well as a pleasant summer afternoon on the brothers’ back porch. As they walked to the edge of the small gallery, however, the familiar dreary atmosphere of the rest of their journey returned in force.

About a hundred feet below the balcony, and far enough away that it appeared small by comparison, was a wide but empty circular racing track. In the middle and around it was a dark, dead forest, very reminiscent of the last time the brothers fought in such a location. The landscape beyond the racetrack was the same dull brownish-red rock that had popped up from time to time, in levels that hadn’t been as far removed from their apparent original template. It occurred to Mugman that the former staff members must have some level of control over the design of their individual levels. Perhaps they even manifested automatically, formed subconsciously out of their muddled sinister thoughts. 

“Doesn’t look like the old man had the brains left to make anything crazy,” Dice remarked, taking hold of the railing. “Kind of a shame. The geezer proll’y had the most goin’ on in his cracked dome.”

The boys joined their progressively less reluctant companion at the railing, and for a moment Mugman experienced a quick flash of the almost inborn fear of falling that came with growing up with an extremely fragile head. They probably weren’t as far up as it seemed, but that didn’t stop horrific visions of the ground rushing up to meet him. Mugman was harshly jolted out of this nauseating trance, however, by the sudden clap of a gloved hand on his shoulder.

“Enjoying the view, are we?”

As sinister as that line should have sounded, Mugman’s terror was offset somewhat by the loud, ostentatious tone in which it was delivered. This dissonance was more than made up for when Mugman managed to turn around enough to see the figure accosting them, and came face-to-face with a long, grimy skull.

“AGHH!” he cried involuntarily, trying to shrug the figure’s hand off of him. “Why aren’t you –”

“Now, now, there’s no use betting before someone does the bookmaking!” the man interrupted, and as the three quickly turned to face him they could see more clearly that indeed, he had changed a bit since they saw him last. Phear Lap was a good deal skinnier than Mugman had imagined he’d be, but perhaps he only appeared as such from his attire. Namely, he wasn’t wearing a shirt, making his emaciated arms and individual ribs quite visible. His neck still bore an absurdly oversized horse collar, and a pair of faded suspenders held up his baggy pants, which no doubt concealed equally spindly legs. The skull which had frightened Mugman hid the former staff member’s face, evidently a ghoulish mask rather than his actual head. Mugman chose not to consider whether it was still an actual skull or not.

“Ah, see, I can clean up nice!” he interjected in a smarmy tone, such that Mugman could practically hear him smiling. “Can’t say the same for Dice-kid over here, he looks like he’s been through hell! Ah, I kid, I kid,” he cut himself off before Dice could retort with the obvious. “Gotta say, I hope the weather stays nice, looks like we’re in for some as-tro-nomical odds!” 

“Uh-huh, the big man took all his smarts,” Dice muttered, annoyed. “The crackpot’s impossible to talk to when he’s like –”

“Well, folks, let’s not sit around and wait for it to get worse! The roughies, the stayers, the frontrunners, they’re getting so restless you can feel it in the air, gentlemen!” Phear leaned back onto one of his feet and took off running towards three. Out of instinct Dice stepped to the side, but instead of frantically stopping Phear only leapt over the railing, as if that was what he’d intended to do. Mugman’s eyes widened, his heart leaping back out of his chest for a moment or two, but apparently the showrunner wasn’t completely crazy, as he rose back up to their level seconds later in that strange flying contraption he’d been sitting in when they last fought him. 

“Today’s greenest jockeys have got to get down to their stallions before they can start tearing up the track!” the steward indirectly ordered loudly into the microphone he’d procured from his booth. The three stared incredulously.

“You want us to… get in there?” Mugman asked tentatively, pointing to the booth. Phear drummed his fingers sharply against the side of the machine.

“Now, this here derby runs on a _very_ tight schedule, _and–!_ ” Phear exclaimed shortly before he could be interrupted. “I reckon there’s a fine prize for the winner, a prize that can’t be found anywhere else in this area, no way, no how!”

Mugman and the others traded glances. There was only one “prize” Phear could be talking about, and unfortunately it seemed they’d have to race for it. They got in one by one: First Dice, then the brothers. As soon as Mugman had both feet in the booth the steward took off at a breakneck pace towards the starting gates at the start of the closest straightaway. It wasn’t a particularly smooth ride, either, and as Mugman’s stomach threatened to relinquish what little was in it he was glad not to have his soul spilling everywhere. 

Phear stopped above three gates side by side, and practically pushed Dice and the brothers out. Mugman landed on a rough, dull-colored saddle, his back unfortunately being the part of his body to break his fall. At least it wasn’t his head, he supposed. Human or no, his head could still crack open. Because he had a skull under it…

Mugman decided to abandon that stomach-churning train of thought and focus on getting himself upright. He’d never ridden a horse before, and neither had his brother. He vaguely recalled hearing Elder Kettle describe a horse race at some point, but whatever he said was long gone from Mugman’s memory. The only thing that came to mind was that the two brothers did have a slight leg up over Dice. Jockeys were short, that’s what Elder Kettle would say. _”If you and your brother aren’t going to get any taller, the two of you might as well go make a killing at the races!”_

A sharp ringing pierced Mugman’s consciousness, and he was yanked back to the present. The heavy metal door in front of him swung open and the skeletal horse he’d been dropped onto took off without pause. 

“Oho! A new variable skews the odds!” Phear’s voice echoed loudly around him. Mugman couldn’t see where the announcer is, but he was too focused on his words to care. What did he mean, “new variable?” Mugman looked around himself frantically, trying to see through all the dust the horses were kicking up, and froze as his eyes locked onto his brother.

“C-Cuphead!” he shouted, barely hearing himself over all the noise. “Your-Your…” he couldn’t say it, he couldn’t find a good way to explain it fast. Cuphead turned his head at the sound of his brother’s voice, and his face went blank as small bit of liquid ran down the side of his face. 

From inside his head. 

Mugman gritted his teeth and tried to steer his horse over to help his brother stop, but the creature wouldn’t budge from its straight path forward. He wasn’t sure if what he was seeing was real, but judging by the look of pure terror on Cuphead’s face as he yanked hard on his reins in vain it was highly unlikely for it not to be. 

“Dice!” Mugman yelled ahead. It seemed that Dice had a trifle more experience riding horses than either of the brothers, as he was a good several feet ahead of them. He did hear Mugman, though, and swiftly looked over his shoulder. Mugman hadn’t been able to see Dice all that well in the dust, but when he turned the boy could see that whatever effect this level was having on his brother’s form was swiftly taking hold of Dice as well. Mugman was too dumbfounded and out of breath to try to communicate what he was seeing to the former manager, and simply gestured erratically at his own face. Dice got the message and as soon as his fingers came into contact with a hard, smooth edge on the right side of his face his eyes went wide.

“The hell is happening?!” he shouted over the cacophony of hooves on dirt. 

“I don’t know, but it happened to Cuphead, too!” Mugman returned loudly. “This level is supposed to be fraud, I think, but your head’s actually back to the way it was, isn’t it?”

Dice ran his hand more thoroughly over the familiar pips on the side of his head as he bobbed up and down on his horse and cringed in an uncharacteristically noticeable way. “Yeah, feels pretty goddamn real to me,” he answered, making his horse slow down so him and Mugman didn’t have to shout as loud. Of course, it was at this moment that Phear decided to drown them out. 

“And it looks as if we’re seeing a surprising return to form in our jockeys today, gentlemen!” he quipped, and now Mugman could just make him out hovering on the sidelines to his right. “Let’s hope it isn’t too much of a detriment, as I’m sure our punters have some nice fat wagers on the line!” He chuckled at that statement. “Ah, wait, that’s right, folks! Our punters _are_ our jockeys! I wonder which one of them will ride off the victor?”

Mugman’s grip tightened on the reins at that rhetorical question. Fraud. It didn’t surprise him that the race they were being made to ride in was rigged in some way, even as strange a way as suddenly messing with their forms, but what Phear had reminded him of was even worse. Only one of them could win. Only one of them could leave.

“Mugs, get on my horse,” came Dice’s voice after Phear had finished expositing the rather unfair situation the three of them were in. Mugman broke his gaze away from the announcer.

“What?” he asked, perplexed by the order.

“Come on, we don’t got no time to play around!” Dice grabbed the back of Mugman’s shirt and pulled him up and over onto his horse. “Don’t you think you’ll be gettin’ pretty damn fragile yourself in a minute or two?”

Mugman bit his lip and held on tightly to Dice’s torso as he turned his attention back to the track. Even in the heat of the current situation, Mugman was surprised the former manager didn’t make him just hold onto his shirt. 

“Folks, we’re witnessing an astounding change in tactics today!” Phear’s voice pealed out. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a maneuver in all of my two hundred-odd years of life and death! It’s inspired, to be sure, but I doubt the track fancies being so pointedly upstaged!”

“The track?!” repeated Mugman frantically. The ground shook around them, and the boy gulped as a great strip of earth rose up in front of them. It took him a moment to comprehend what was happening, but the track was lifting up into an incline, high up in the air. It seemed this had been Phear’s plan from the start.

“Keep an eye out for any rogue horses. We’ve gotta get to your brother, and fast,” Dice ordered, steering his horse with surprising skill. Mugman obeyed and scouted as best as he could, but Dice had a remarkable intuition, and the boy wondered if Dice had just given him something to do to keep him busy. The track, meanwhile, was curving into a spiral, and the forest below was getting farther away by the minute. Inexplicably there were fewer horses now, giving Mugman the sense that the race had entered its next phase. Nothing much different from what he and his brother had gone through a year ago, but the feeling was quite different when he or his brother could die at any time and _stay_ dead. Or at least in service of the Devil, which probably wasn’t far off from death.

“Well, shave my mustache and call me Betsy! I reckon one of our jockeys has had quite a bit of practice over the years!” Phear mused excitedly, floating concerningly close to Mugman and Dice. “Sticks with you even a hundred years later, it seems!”

Dice seemed to not be listening, his eyes locked on Cuphead’s horse several feet away. They were getting closer, and Mugman was relieved to see Cuphead holding up surprisingly well, despite the circumstances. His straw was in his mouth, meaning that he must have been constantly drinking down his soul to keep as much of it as he could from spilling. When they weren’t in the middle of trying to win an extremely rigged and deadly horse race, Mugman would have to compliment his brother’s resourcefulness. He did have a good idea every once in a while. 

“Round and round they go, folks!” Phear narrated in reference to the track, which was still ever growing and moving with the remaining two horses. “Where’s the finish line? I’m not sure even the jockeys know!”

“Kid, listen to me,” Dice barked loudly, his voice sounding even more hoarse than usual from yelling. “We’re both gonna jump on your brother’s horse, and then I’m gonna ride the damn thing off the edge of the track.”

Mugman’s eyes shot open. “What?! That doesn’t –”

“Lap’s leading us up to the ceiling, and there ain’t nothing up there. We’ll crash. But right below it, that’s the exit. You can see it if ya squint through all this damn dust.” Mugman obliged, and could make out an odd flash of light, just glowing in space.

“I see it!” he yelled back. “But what about me an’ Cuphead! He’ll spill for sure, and I could –”

“Make sure both of you fall head first!” Dice interrupted. “Souls’ll stay in your heads that way!”

Mugman opened his mouth, but admittedly had no counter-argument. Not that he had the time to make one, as the next ten seconds consisted of Dice jumping from his horse to Cuphead’s, pulling Mugman by the arm after him. The horse the two of them had been riding fell into a lifeless pile of bones, and Dice immediately swerved the three of them sharply left.

“Oh! Looks like our jockeys want to end it all! Helluva way to go, I suppose!” Phear exclaimed, and strangely enough it didn’t look like he was going to try and stop them. Apparently at the end of the day he preferred spectating to active intervention. Lucky for them, Mugman guessed.

As Dice rode off the side of the track and the three of them began falling, Mugman held tight to his brother and made certain his head didn’t budge from its completely upside-down position. Phear’s voice sounded around Mugman and his compatriots one more time before the abstract glow of the exit completely enveloped them.

“Well, we bid our riders a fine farewell, and, of course, teeter on the edge of our seats as we wait a little while for them to make a glorious return! Much humbled by their downtime, I expect…”

Mugman felt woozy in his head as the level blinked out around them. Then again, maybe Phear had just let them go find an even worse fate ahead. With the usual theme of the eighth level running through Mugman’s head, he probably would have preferred crashing into a ceiling to whatever was coming up second-to-last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!! and thanks to all who've read my fiction since the last chapter was posted, 40 new hits in between chapters is a new high for this fic! see you all in two weeks, where things get way more... punchy. ;)


	12. The Gemini's Boneyard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm very happy with how this chapter turned out! it's almost like my chapters are better when i start writing them with a decent amount of time before the deadline... anyway, hope you enjoy this chapter and it's superior pacing!

_I feel numb… is this what it’s like to lose your soul?_

Cuphead jolted awake with a gasp, his face wet with what he hoped was sweat, and not something more important. Something was on his head. He took it off, and realized that it was the helmet Mugman had been wearing. He still hadn’t told Cuphead how he’d gotten it. Nevertheless, it appeared that the helmet was the only thing that had kept Cuphead alive after he’d unceremoniously been dealt his usual, more fragile form. Though he did feel a little lightheaded, as if he’d spilled on the way to whatever level they were currently in. Speaking of which…

“Mugs! Where are you? Are you okay?” Cuphead called, not seeing his brother anywhere nearby. It was dim around him, and the air felt cold and moist. A thick fog was rolling in, but Cuphead could make out dark round and cross-shaped silhouettes standing all throughout the grim landscape. It seemed they’d ended up in some kind of cemetery. Moreover, the graves in this cemetery were all open, though Cuphead couldn’t tell if they were occupied or not. Placing the helmet back on his head, the boy began tentatively advancing into the foreboding terrain. 

Cuphead reluctantly let his eyes dwindle to the deep, dark, squarish holes in front of the gravestones as he walked past. Most of them seemed empty, but others hadn’t enough light cast into them to tell. Not that there was much light to begin with. Cuphead was stopped short in his advancement when he noticed a glint at the bottom of one of the graves. A reflection of the pale fog above, a familiar texture that put him in mind of the porcelain surface of his head. 

“Mugs…?” He asked quietly, afraid to make any kind of strong assumption in case he was dangerously incorrect. Cuphead approached the six-foot hole and carefully peered down into it, his curiosity rewarded with the sight of his brother, unconscious but unharmed. “Oh, thank god…” he muttered. Bracing himself on either side of the rectangular hole, Cuphead carefully lowered himself into the grave to get his brother awake.

“Mugs, come on! You can sleep when we get out of this mess,” Cuphead encouraged, not too loud in case their next adversary was somewhere nearby. Who would that next adversary be, anyway? There were only two options left, neither very pleasant to consider. Cuphead gently shook his brother’s shoulders, and gave him a quick light sock in the stomach. The two of them had long ago agreed that that was the safest, yet most annoying way for them to get each other up. Mugman almost never did it to Cuphead, being his overly nice self, but Cuphead had gleefully employed it at every opportunity.

“ _Ow_ , Cuphead, I’ll be there in a –” Mugman trailed off, taking in the greyish walls of dirt around him. “Oh. Right. Hell.” He carefully sat up, a hand pressed lightly against his porcelain. His eyes finally focused completely on his brother, and widened. “Cuphead, you’ve got a chip!” 

“Huh? Guess I shouldn’t be surprised after falling like that,” Cuphead conceded, trying to hide his worry. “Is it bad?”

“Well, you’ve only got a piece taken out of the top, but…” Mugman reached out a finger and ran it down his brother’s face, tracing a crack all the way down to the corner of his mouth. Cuphead’s stomach dropped. “I don’t think it’s leaking, but –”

“Come on, let’s go find Dice. Get outta here before you or me gets worse.” Cuphead gently pulled Mugman to his feet and started climbing back out.

“What? Did I crack too?!”

“No more than you already are, I think.” Cuphead hoisted his way out of the hole and turned to help his brother out. But seeing him without his head propped against the wall alerted him to a very nasty casualty indeed. “Uh… that’s a... “

“What is it?” Mugman asked, taking Cuphead’s hand. Cuphead bit his lip and pulled Mugman out of the hole before saying anything else. After the two of them were both on their feet, as well as a safe distance away from the six-foot-deep grave, Cuphead decided it was safe enough to break the unfortunate news. 

“Mugs… your handle’s broken.”

Mugman’s eyes widened and he reached his hands back to feel for the break. “It’s right in the middle…” he whispered, trembling involuntarily. Cuphead lifted his hands to the helmet on his head and put it on his brother.

“Don’t think about it, Mugs. We’ve gotta find Dice and figure out what the hell’s going on in here, so we can get out. Do you remember what… what…” Cuphead stammered, suddenly feeling very lightheaded. He quickly sat down before he fell down, and put his hands to his head in confusion. Mugman gasped. “What is it?” Cuphead asked, readying his finger despite his dizziness.

“No, Cuphead, it’s not… you’ve… you’ve lost so much of your soul…” Mugman murmured. Now it was Cuphead’s turn to feel shivers run down his spine. He’d spilled part of his soul? What did that mean?! Would he lose his memory, was he going to –

“Cuphead, stop shaking, please,” begged Mugman, looking just as concerned if not more so than his brother. “D-Don’t lose consciousness, you might…” a hitch in his throat cut off his sentence. Cuphead quickly gathered as much strength as he could muster and stood back up. Though he definitely wasn’t feeling any better, he was damned if he was going to leave his brother crying alone in the middle of a spooky graveyard. “I’m fine, Mugs, I’ll be fine,” he asserted dully, narrowing his eyes in an attempt to focus his vision.”Now, what level are we in? Whadda we hafta worry about?”

“Oh, well, it’s…” Mugman trailed off again. “Violence. It’s violence.”

“Uh huh,” Cuphead muttered in reply. “That’s a problem.” Suddenly he was a lot more worried about where their adversary could be. Not that any of the former staff members had been very forgiving up to this point, but the danger present in the level at hand was tenfold if the brothers were going to stay as cups. Many less-than-desirable thoughts ran through Cuphead’s mind, and the woozy feelings returned in force. It seemed like he couldn’t handle too many thoughts at once, with less of his soul in his head. Everything, every part of him was concentrated into the small amount that remained, and he could hardly think straight unless he only had one thing on his mind at a time. “We’ll worry about that when we find Dice. Prob’ly shouldn’t stick around here for too long, what with…” He stopped. He hadn’t the space to think about whoever they were going to fight. “Yeah, let’s get going.”

“I – Cuphead, are you – At least wear the helmet, you can’t afford to spill any more than you already have!” Mugman insisted, walking to catch up with his brother as he started moving on. “Just make me less worried, okay? My handle’s all that broke, you’ve got a worse crack and you could –”

“Easy, Mugs, I… just put it on my head…” Cuphead muttered. Dice, they were looking for Dice. His vision focused a little, and he hardly felt Mugman put the helmet back on his head. Though at this gesture another thought occupied him, and wouldn’t let up no matter how hard he tried. Cuphead leaned against one of the gravestones dumbly, and Mugman was quick to help him sit. “Hey, where… where’d you get this helmet anyway?” he asked, his mind clearing up as he asked. “You’ve had it since Pocus’s… weird level…”

“Oh, gosh, I never told you, did I?” Mugs asked, eyes widening. “I saw Elder Kettle in a mirror-vision-thing!”

“You what?!” Cuphead exclaimed, sitting up a little. “Where? How? What did he say?”

“I-I don’t know how it was him, he didn’t look like himself, not… not completely,” Mugman admitted. “He was way younger, and he was… he was human! I think… I think it was a memory or something…”

“How do you figure that?” 

“Well, he acted like he didn’t know me at first, like I was someone else,” Mugman explained. “Then at some point I think he remembered, but I couldn’t tell when… that’s how my arm got fixed,” he added, holding up his now bandaged shoulder. “He helped me escape, but not before he just shoved this helmet on me. I’m not sure why he gave it to me…”

“D’you think… he’s still himself, somehow? Like the Devil didn’t make ‘im forget completely?” Cuphead asked, running his hand over the smooth metal surface of the helmet absentmindedly. “What if he knew we’d be cups again at some point?”

“Even if he did, I don’t know how he would’ve gotten into Hopus’s level,” Mugman murmured thoughtfully. “Hopus did say someone had ruined his illusion, but what does that even mean?”

“I dunno, but…” Cuphead remembered something else. “Mugs, I saw a memory too, I think. It was like you said, everyone thought I was someone else, but I don’t think anyone ever actually knew who I was. Least, not until the very end.”

“What do you mean? What happened at the end?”

Cuphead narrowed his eyes, recalling all the details of his experience in the memory. With everything he’d witnessed inside, it wasn’t very difficult to do so. “It was in the past, like a really long time ago. I met this other kid, and he turned out to be –”

“Boys, is that you makin’ a damn ruckus over here?” Cuphead and his brother jumped at the sound of Dice’s voice through the fog, and watched tentatively as the once again dice-headed man grew closer and more visible. He didn’t appear to have escaped the fall unscathed either, as the top left corner of his head was noticeably chipped off. “Can’t say I’m displeased to find you, though,” he added grudgingly, though of course didn’t elaborate on why.

“Have you seen anything resembling an exit?” Mugman asked. “Or… an enemy?”

“No exit yet. There’s this damn hill some feet that away, though,” Dice muttered, hitching his thumb over his shoulder. “I reckon that’s where we wanna go. As for braindead stiffs… I’ve seen silhouettes in the fog.”

Mugman’s eyes darted around involuntarily, and he bit his lip. “Silhouettes, plural? Who’re we fighting here?”

“Hmph, shouldn’t be a problem, they’ll prob’ly be fighting each other more than us,” Dice grunted. “If anything it’s the next level that worries me more –” Dice cut himself off as a small shuffling noise sounded behind him, and quickly sidestepped something small and round that whizzed past his head and fell to the ground in front of the three. Cuphead got to his feet, and the group all leaned forward to discern what had been thrown at them. It shifted in place of its own volition, and as it rolled over a little they all recoiled upon realizing that it was a young boy’s head. He spat out a bit of the greyish dirt from the graveyard, and off in the fog footsteps could be heard stomping over.

“Dammit, Pip, you missed!” shouted a small, fluty tone of voice that grew louder along with the footsteps. Out from the fog stepped a very short and young-looking girl, wearing a dirty but flouncing white dress and a sour expression. Her face looked almost identical to that of the boy’s head on the ground, and that rang a bell in Cuphead’s memory. 

“How the hell could I miss?! You’re the one who bloody threw me!” the boy snapped back from the ground. “Now get over here and pick me up before these tossers knock my bloody skull in!”

“Oh, I won’t do that just yet, they’re armed and dangerous!” the girl returned, hanging back and taking in the brothers and Dice. “Though I’m far from worried about our former employer.” She grinned a little. “He’s hardly a contender, the Devil made sure of that. Pity it took us so long to notice.”

“I can do much worse than you two could, that’s for sure,” Dice retorted coldly. Pip laughed from his place on the ground.

“What, are you gonna show us a wicked card trick? So fancy it’ll give us a heart attack?!” he taunted. “You could hardly beat these kids with your chintzy little routine! Had to throw us at ‘em to soften ‘em up first!”

“I see you still haven’t learned to keep your damn mouths shut,” Dice sneered, suddenly looking very angry. The green in his eyes pierced through the fog. “An’ I don’t think you’re in any position to be a critic when you don’t even got a body!”

Cuphead and Mugman flinched as the former manager kicked Pip’s head. It rolled over to his sister, who scoffed and picked it up. “We’ve got a body, dummy,” she retorted. “The Devil gave us this one to share!” she pointed out, gesturing at her own form. Pip huffed and rolled his eyes.

“Might as well be Dot’s, she hasn’t let me have it yet! I don’t even mind the dress, I’d just rather not be a bloody disembodied head for a minute or two!” he griped, glaring at his sister.

Dot rolled her eyes. “Well, I said I’d fight you for it –”

“No, no, we’ve got more pressing matters at hand,” Pip interrupted, looking back to the three. “Namely, making sure these three never see the world of the living again.”

“What’re you gonna do?” Cuphead asked, preparing a shot. “You’re just a couple of kids, an’ one of you can’t do jack without the other!” The twins certainly appeared outmatched, and even looked a few years younger than Cuphead and his brother, at least physically. But Cuphead needed to focus, and focusing on fighting the twins was remarkably easy.

“You underestimate us, _kid!_ ” Pip asserted with a smug grin. “This isn’t our first time fighting you lot, and trust me when I say we’ve lea –” The boy was cut off by a bolt of blue suddenly hitting his sister square in the face, knocking her head clean off her shoulders. Cuphead turned to see his brother with his finger poised and glowing, an expression on his face that he hadn’t sported since the two had collected contracts to save themselves a year prior. “If they’re supposed to share that body, I figured her head came off pretty easily too,” Mugman explained. Cuphead nodded, surprised at his brother’s sudden resurgence of fighting spirit. Any other day Cuphead would have been the one to mercilessly shoot someone in the face.

“Hey, I almost wanna thank you!” Pip exclaimed, putting on his head in place of his sister’s. “Finally got some bloody autonomy around here! Hell, she even had the legs when we were stuck together… but still, we can’t have you getting the jump on us so easily!” He turned around and quickly retrieved Dot’s head before turning back around. “And unlike my dear sister, I don’t miss!” 

Pip threw Dot’s head Mugman’s way, and immediately went for Cuphead himself. Cuphead focused on the boy running at him and shot quickly, but Pip had remarkably good reflexes and dodged most of them. That, and he was a small target. Cuphead couldn’t stop his momentum before his fist finally collided with Cuphead’s stomach, knocking the wind out of him. “I’m damned if I’m going to cut our fingers shattering that pretty porcelain of yours,” he grinned. “I’ll let the fall do that for me.” Cuphead stumbled back and noticed just in time how dangerously close he was to the edge of one of the graves. If falling into one of those didn’t break his head, it would certainly spill the rest of his soul. He quickly dashed out of that potential disaster, and Pip followed his path with a scowl. 

“Goodness, it slipped my mind how ungodly slippery the two of you were… you wouldn’t even die,” he scoffed, running at Cuphead with another fist ready. This time, the cup saw it coming and dodged it before landing a shot right against Pip’s temple. The shot left a smoking black mark on the boy’s face, but he was otherwise unharmed, and grinned again. “Luckily, we’ve evened the odds this time around. Me and my sister are quite undefeatable, the Devil made sure of that, now that we’re not pawns in some silly bet of his.”

A thought popped into Cuphead’s head, something that could give him the distraction he needed. “It’s ‘my sister and I,’” he corrected. “My sister and I are undefeatable.”

Pip raised an eyebrow in annoyance. “Come again?” he asked, lowering his fists. Cuphead took this opportunity to sock him in the face, and let loose the orange shot he’d been charging for the past few seconds. Before Pip could recover it hit him straight on, and his head flew off. “Dot!” he called. “I’ve been knocked off!”

“God, you couldn’t even keep the bloomin’ thing for five minutes?!” she snapped, hanging firmly onto Mugman’s straw with her teeth. As Mugman tried to shake and shoot her off of him, she let go only for the hands of their body to catch her head mid-air and put it back in place. “Come on, Pip, let’s put an end to this nonsense,” she griped, picking up her brother’s head and judging what to do. 

“You couldn’tve thrown the brat’s head in a grave or something?” Dice snapped at Cuphead. Cuphead turned to him, hating how surprised he was at the former manager being so critical.

“S’not like I had a lotta time to do anything about that!” he retorted.

“Dicey’s right, how the bloody hell’d you two beat up twenty-something debtors anyway?” Pip jeered, adding fuel to the fire. “Didja really lean on the Devil’s crutches that hard? Wouldn’t be surprised, with the lousy way the both of you are fighting!”

“The brat’s right for once,” Dice grudgingly agreed. “I knew the two of you were too soft to handle dealing with my old boss, but if you can’t beat the tar outta a pair of stiffs who’re already dead, you’re more spineless than I –”

Cuphead had barely even thought about doing it, but the urge had consumed him almost immediately. Dice winced visibly and clutched the right side of his chest, which was now tarnished by the same large black smouldering mark Cuphead had dealt Pip. Mugman was at a loss for words, and the twins were snickering. Dice, meanwhile, looked oddly fascinated by his being shot in the chest, and his gaze turned very quizzically towards their adversaries.

“You’re makin’ us want to fight,” he stated. The twins traded glances with each other but said nothing.

“Now how would we do that?” asked Dot. Dice stepped a little closer to the boys.

“It ain’t you, it’s this place, I’d never… I’d never say anything like that to the kid, not anytime in the past few days.” He looked around until his eyes locked on a large, dark shape in the fog. “Boys, run for the hill. Now.”

“Huh?” Mugman asked.

“Now, let’s go, dammit!” Dice demanded, starting towards it himself. Spurred by the former manager’s authoritative tone, Cuphead took off after him, followed by his brother. He could also hear the twins chasing behind.

“No, you can’t leave, we won’t let you!” Dot shouted, and soon Pip’s head flew by and hit Dice’s back with a weak thump before disappearing into one of the graves. “We’ve been dead for too bloomin' long, we’ll fill every grave in this damned boneyard with your bodies if we have to! Pieces and pieces and pieces of you, as many as it takes!”

The three scrambled up the hill, and Cuphead could just make out the light of the exit, it had been so obscured by the fog around them. Was that what Dice thought was affecting them? Considering the logic of the other levels, it wouldn’t surprise him. He quickly changed his focus back to escaping, he was starting to get light-headed. Dice’s hand reached for his in the fog and he quickly took it, letting himself get pulled up into the light.

_...Who’s left, again?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hahaha, am i ready for the next chapter. i've saved the best for last, and can promise you that the final level will certainly earn its keep. see you all in two weeks, and have a lovely day!


	13. Blood Test

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> blood test: a difficult billiards shot that must be made under pressure, intentionally set up as a challenge for the other player.
> 
> hope you all enjoy the chapter!

_Ooh... your head’s all square now. And I’m –_

_Mine. I’m your boss, now. And don’t you forget it._

_Huehueh, alrighty, boss… guess I’m stuck here forever, huh?_

_Yes, I reckon you are… so wipe that grin off your face._

_I’ll take off mine if you take off yours! **And you never did, didja, Del–**_

“Shut the hell up, why don’tcha?!”

Dice’s voice echoed around him, and he found himself shaking. No, not shaking. Shivering. The air was cold, and still, and there was no landscape around him as far as the eye could see. He seemed to be a decent distance away from the brothers as well, he couldn’t see them either. 

“Dice, is that you?” Speak of the devil. Dice heard footsteps jogging over to him, cautiously. Upon looking down Dice realized that the ground beneath his feet was ice, a smooth blue-ish surface with no discernible depth. Suddenly, the footsteps stopped, and the former manager heard a startled cry several feet away from him.

“Kid, you alright?” he called, starting off in the direction of the noise. That was a question he wouldn’t have asked in earnest not three days ago. This unforgiving hellscape his boss had dropped them in was admittedly playing heavily on sympathies he hadn’t even known himself to possess. Not that he’d ever admit such a weakness aloud. For the moment, Dice continued walking, until he came across Cuphead. The boy looked to be submerged in the ice up to his waist, which explained why he couldn’t have kept on running towards Dice. “Criminy pete… how the hell did you get stuck like that?” he griped. Cuphead made a face.

“Look, I didn’t know the ice would just give under my feet! Turned all goopy out of nowhere, and I sank in!” he explained, annoyed. Dice kept a safe distance, in case that particular area of ice was the only one that served as an indiscernible death trap. “You haven’t seen Mugs anywhere, have you?” asked Cuphead, his expression softening a little with worry.

“No, I was alone when I came in. Guess this level fancied droppin’ us off in different places… ain’t surprising, really, considering – _ggghhhahhhh, hell,_ why’re my legs so damn cold?!” Dice cut himself off, wincing. Cuphead gasped and pointed at Dice’s lower half.

“Dice, you’re sinking!” he exclaimed. Dice looked down and made a similar exclamatory noise: the ice had somehow swallowed him up to his knees, and it hadn’t finished dragging him down. Remembering what Cuphead had said about the ice being like goop, Dice flailed around and struggled, trying to pull himself out. Despite appearances, however, the ice still felt as hard as stone, and his legs were frozen in place. Soon he was submerged up to the waist, and for a moment assumed that this was as far as he would go. This was where Cuphead had apparently stopped sinking, after all. But the dice man’s stomach dropped as he realized that this would not be the case. His forearms, resting on the ice’s surface, soon dropped underneath it, and as he thrashed around in vain the rest of his torso grew submerged as well, until all that remained above the ice was his head and shoulders. Dice had never felt so cold in all his life, and was sure he was doing a horrible job at hiding his fear for what his final former staff member had up his sleeve.

“Damn it, I wish Mugman was nearby, he could tell us what the hell this level’s supposed to be…” Cuphead muttered, audibly trying to keep his teeth from chattering. “You’re… not gonna die from that, are you?” he asked, in reference to Dice’s immobile position.

“Don’t think I’d be… let off the hook so easily,” Dice answered, breathing stiff and labored. If he was still human, he was sure his dark skin would be tinged blue. Not to mention horribly frostbitten. “I’m sure we can… die pretty easy, but… kicking the bucket from bein’ too cold ain’t the Devil’s sense of humor. Maybe Kettle’s, but not the boss’s. Or… his.”

“His? His who?” asked Cuphead, a little cross at Dice’s vagueness. Dice couldn’t blame him; he too hated that he couldn’t easily mention one of his own former staff members by name. The guy just had such a habit of… filling up space, wherever he went, wherever he was mentioned. Hell, he didn’t deserve to be mentioned. But, seeing as they’d be subjected to his parasitic presence whether they liked it or not… Dice sighed and rolled his eyes, his exhalation a puff of air in front of him. 

“... Mangosteen.”

Cuphead adopted a quizzical expression. “The hell’s a Mangosteen?” he asked. Dice groaned. Maybe explaining this godforsaken nuisance of an employee would distract from the cold that was making him dizzier by the minute.

“Pool player. He was the… most effective hustler I had on staff. Proll’y wasn’t half as good as he was on purpose. He was the only one who hardly ever goddamn listened to me. Well, he would, but… wasn’t ever respectful about it. Only thing he lived for was messing with folks, I swear…”

Cloudy recollection passed Cuphead’s eyes. “And he’s the last guy?” he asked. Dice nodded. “He doesn’t sound so bad…”

“Oh, don’t say that, he’ll make things worse just for the hell of it,” Dice warned. “Wouldn’t be surprised if he’s just sitting a few feet away, listening to us… just ‘cause it’s entertaining for him…” Suddenly, Dice felt something poke him in the back of his head. He strained himself trying to turn around, but couldn’t manage to see what was touching him. “Dammit, he’s right behind me, isn’t he..” Dice grumbled. Cuphead’s face said otherwise. He looked frightened, but even more so confused.

“I don’t think so, it just looks like a… really big stick?” he guessed, confused. “I can’t really make it out, but the tip’s as big as your head!” Dice quirked an eyebrow, but before he could say anything in response the stick poked at him again, harder this time. Then a new voice came through the darkness. It was loud, and echoed in the void around them, but it still had that same infuriating twinge that made it unbearable to listen to at times.

“Gee, boss, you’ve sure done a lot of bad things.”

Dice didn’t hear anything new besides that statement, but Cuphead face grew a whole lot more terrified in the next few seconds. “G-Golly…” he stammered. 

“Oh, hey! I remember you. You made a bunch of black goo fall out my mouth. That was a real trip, huh?” The stick poked at Dice a few more times, then finally subsided. “Jehoshaphat, you can’t see me, can you? Here, hold a tic, wait’ll you see what the big man let me do!” A few moments later, Dice became acutely aware of something moving to his right. He turned to look up into the darkness, and now two strange orbs were reflecting the cold, bright ice. As they drew closer, Dice realized that they were a pair of eight-balls. They were set deep in a pair of round sockets on an equally round face, which bore a wide, unfailing grin stretching completely across its bottom half. With how dark it was he couldn’t make out much else, but the sheer size of the grinning visage was enough for him to comprehend the admittedly threatening image his former staff member had remade himself into. 

“Well, what d’you think?” The tremendous mouth fifty feet above them didn’t cease smiling as it moved, and while that was to be expected of the nuisance it belonged to, the present context cast the habit in quite a different light. “It’s a little too much, isn’t –”

“How do you see?” interrupted Cuphead. “I mean, with the eyes, and such?”

Mangosteen quirked his head to the side. Unnaturally far. Dice couldn’t stop himself from wincing at this gesture, but he couldn’t put his finger on why. “Well, of course I can see, Cuppy, I’ve still got eyes! I just wanted to have a little fun, you know. Haven’t gotten a chance to really play for awhile. And now, well… we’ve got time.” Mangosteen’s face disappeared and as Dice looked around as much as he was able, he couldn’t pinpoint where he’d gone until his stupid voice came again from farther away. 

“You know, I usually need at least a little more light than this. Wouldn’t be a good hustler if I showed off my skills blindfolded.” The darkness around Cuphead and Dice seemed to subside a little, and the surrounding barren landscape’s purpose gradually became terrifyingly clear. The seemingly endless field of ice did end at a dark barrier, which towered many feet taller than Cuphead and Dice combined. Across from the two of them on either side were what looked like deep, round pits at breaks in the barrier. However, what made Dice connect the dots was almost right in front of him, if not far away. A set of colorful numbered balls, arranged no doubt in a triangular formation. The final level was just one massive pool table. And the three of them were frozen in place right in the middle. 

“Alrighty, let’s see if I’ve still got a strong break shot in me,” Mango chirped from the end of the table. A tense ten or so seconds passed, and both Cuphead and Dice jumped as a sharp _crack!_ rang out behind them. A second later a massive white ball whizzed past them, thankfully going between the two. Another crack could be heard at the other end and Dice anxiously watched the colored balls go flying in all different directions, the six-ball bouncing off a rail and towards them before losing its momentum just in time. Each of the balls was easily ten feet in diameter.

“Cuphead! Dice! Over here!” The pair looked across the table to finally find Mugman, stuck up to his ankles nearby the closest side pocket. While Cuphead called back to his brother, unsuccessfully hiding his worry at Mugman’s position, Dice wondered why the meeker brother was trapped less so than him or even Cuphead. What had Mango opened his trap for in the first place, something about doing a lot of bad things…

“Heck, that’s pretty good! Didn’t get any in, though, must be a smidge rusty,” Mangosteen surmised affably, walking around to the side where the cue-ball had ended up. Dice wished that at least his hands were free, so he could aim a few choice gestures in the hustler’s direction. “You know damn well you ain’t, and there ain’t a sucker around to hoodwink this time, so you might as well quit your damn song-and-dance before you hurt yourself,” the former manager snapped, the vitriolic reverb coming back to him all too easily. 

“ _Huehuehueh!_ ” Mangosteen snickered, a gulping chuckle that bubbled up through his throat and got stuck halfway through. He leaned back and bent down to line up his next shot, and focused the shining black orbs in his eyesockets on his former manager. “You still sore about our first game, mister **De-la-croix?** ”

**_CRACK!_ **

Dice lost all feeling in his body, and his throat seized up as he struggled to form words. “What… in the hell… did you just –“

“Look out!” Cuphead shouted, ducking to the side as the nine flew their way. Dice hardly heard him, and before he could react the ball collided with his torso and separated his head from his shoulders. Fortunately, he came to a stop on his bottom side, and while his eye level was greatly diminished he could still see his former staff member looking absolutely tickled at the other end of the table. 

“He didn’t even hear me…” Cuphead muttered in horror. He turned back to Mangosteen. “Who the hell is mister Delacroix?” Dice wished he could fall into the pocket behind him, hell, he wished Mango would crush his head between his thumb and forefinger and end it there. 

“Oh, that’s just the boss! Back when he was still the Devil’s errand boy and my age matched my looks,” the skinny man explained nonchalantly, looking for his next shot. “Though I was a little, little kid when I first heard whispers of Franklin Delacroix.”

“You’re saying… that was Dice’s name?!” Mugman asked in disbelief. “Before he… um…”

“Well, I think Cuppy knows the story better than me, right?” Mango asked, lining up to sink the three. Mugman looked over to his brother in confusion, and Cuphead opened his mouth to say something else Dice was sure he didn’t want to hear. 

“You’re not supposed to know that name, you damn lunatic,” he hissed, cutting off the cup before anything could come out of his mouth. “If I weren’t stuck in this damn table, I’d –“

“Oh, I remember everything, Delacroix! I had a name too, you know, we all did. And I dunno if you _are_ still sore from that game, but I sure am! Least, my neck is,” he amended with another chuckle. Another smooth shot sank the three. “Whoops, I’m getting a little giddy here.” 

“Your neck?” repeated Mugman. Mangosteen said nothing in reply, but cocked his head once again, all the way down to his shoulder.

“But enough about me! I’m not all that important. It’s kind of rich the Devil put me so close to the end, really. Not saying I’m not enjoying it, though!” He walked over near Mugman and eyeballed the six, which was only a few feet from Dice’s body. As he dug out a stub of chalk from his vest pocket for the tip of his cue, the blue-clad cup made a shocked noise.

“Hey, I’m… I’m changing again!” he exclaimed. Sure enough, as he struggled in the ice, his porcelain head was quickly replaced with the human one he had slowly been getting used to over the course of their journey. Seeing this, Mangosteen leaned over and stared with an indeterminate expression, as of course his grin didn’t falter. “Huh, that’s a neat trick,” he remarked. “Suppose it helps you not shatter into a mil-li-on little pieces?” 

“Wait, if he changed back…” Cuphead trailed off, before frantically whirling around towards Dice’s head. “You’ve gotta get back to your body, and fast! I dunno what’ll happen if –”

**_CRACK!_ **

“Don’t you worry, boss, I’m not going to let you off that easy!” chirped Mangosteen as the six went sailing past Cuphead. It banked off the rail behind Dice’s head, and as it whizzed towards the corner pocket it knocked him back over towards his body. As Cuphead started to turn human once more himself, he leaned over and reached as far as he could, grabbing Dice’s head. “Hope you’ve got good aim, kid,” Dice hissed through his teeth, feeling himself reflexively grimace in panic. 

Cuphead quirked an eyebrow. “Glad to hear you still trust me about as much as I trust you, _Delacroix_ ,” he snarked in return, lobbing the former manager’s head towards his shoulders. As Dice was hoping, he landed facing forward square on top of his torso. Once he predictably began reverting to his human form, he alarmingly sank deeper into the ice, until only his head and shoulders hadn’t been swallowed. “And just what the hell was that for?!” he snapped up at his beaming defunct employee. 

“See, you keep on trying to talk to me, and it’s a little distracting, you know? I’m just trying to clear the table here, and it’s not like you haven’t anything to say!” the hustler pouted. It didn’t even sound mocking coming from him, Mango had always had a terrible knack for sounding sincere no matter what came out of his mouth. 

“He knew all of you a long time ago, didn’t he? Before the casino, I mean,” Cuphead asked. Dice tensed. Was the kid more intuitive than he’d come to expect? There was no way he’d know more than what Dice had let slip in the past, unless…

“When we were in Hopus’s level… I saw him, when he was a lot younger,” Cuphead explained further. Dice felt his stomach seep through his pelvis and pool in the soles of his feet. He could hear the tentative discontent in the boy’s voice: he knew the worst of it. “...You guys don’t even care about us, do you?” he asked. “We’re surviving all this to free Elder Kettle, but… that’s not why the Devil dropped us down here, not really.” He turned to Mugman, who was looking more lost than Dice had ever seen him. “I don’t remember much about that book Elder Kettle used to read to us, the one with all the levels of Hell, but I do remember the last level, ‘cause it was for the worst sin of all: treachery.” Mangosteen was lining up to sink the ten and thirteen, but the eight-balls in his eyesockets stayed trained on Cuphead as he kept talking. “And that got me thinking, about why you’re more stuck in this table than we are,” he said to Dice. “It’s because you betrayed the Devil. You didn’t let him kill us when we came back after beating ‘im, an’ it doesn’t really matter that you didn’t really want to.”

Mugman’s mouth fell open as presumably the same realization dawned on him. “And in every level, all we’ve done is just fight Dice’s old staff, or run away! They’ve said all they want is to settle whatever they’ve got against him, but Dice always acts like they’re no one worth talking to. And for the most part… they kind of were,” he admitted. “Lots of ‘em didn’t even seem like real people. But I guess the Devil just… wanted to…”

“See me squirm,” Dice finished for him. Mango sent the ten down to the side pocket, but the thirteen bounced awkwardly off the corner he’d been aiming for. Now he was just stalling. Dice hadn’t ever seen Mangosteen genuinely miss a shot, except for…

“I broke the hustler’s neck,” Dice stated. “I needed a pool player on my staff, and the boss wanted to see if I could find one myself. Right before he sank the eight-ball, I got him to lean down and check his shot. Then –”

**_CRACK!_ **

The four smacked into the corner pocket. “On the way down, he miscued,” Dice concluded, before rolling his eyes. He’d have to go through all of them. “I cheated the bartender and his cronies, made a patsy outta Chimes, used Pira to get her money, rigged a duel with the sheriff, burned Wheezy’s house down, crippled Pocus with one of his own tricks, exploited the twins and their spoiled naïveté, an’ ran a straight-up racket at the races before Lap ratted on me.” Cuphead looked surprisingly disturbed. Apparently Pocus’s smokes and mirrors hadn’t shown him everything. “The Devil told me to do half of it. But I did it gladly, told myself that it was ‘cause they were bad people, I was just doin’ the Devil’s work. Eventually got around to enjoying it. But I never got any comeuppance, really. I was sittin’ pretty by the Devil’s side, and kicked my staff while they were down.”

Dice’s gaze had dropped to the icy surface a few inches below his chin, and when he looked up he didn’t expect to feel so disconcerted by the three pairs of eyes (well, technically two) that he knew would be trained on him. “So,” he muttered, facing the final staff member. “Having all that still knocking around in your melon, presumably so the Devil could make certain you made me cough up all my sins, I expect you’ll shoot me dead now.”

Another chuckle burbled up through Mangosteen’s throat. “ _Huehuehueh,_ after all these years you underestimate my restraint!” he exclaimed, the genuineness of his surprise completely indiscernible. “You know, I’m sure that’s why the big guy put me right here, and let me have all this fun, now that I think about it.” Without checking his shot, Mango sent the cue-ball careening into a cluster of balls, each one of them sinking perfectly into two corners and a side pocket. “I remember everything, sure. I even remember your hands on my head, twisting it allll the way to the side,” he added, twisting his neck again to demonstrate. “But I don’t know what the point is in snuffing you out, not really. I mean, look at me, I’m already sunk as is,” he pointed out, tapping a finger against one of his eight-ball eyes. “Old, alone, done-for. Everyone else has got the giddy-up to make you hurt tenfold as much as they have, like it’ll make them any less… nothing. But me, I don’t know. I just wanted to shoot some pool.” Another seemingly careless shot sank three more. Four more remained, all in inconvenient positions. “That’s why I’m here, ‘cause of what I want. Of course the Devil wouldn’t want one of us to bump you off, we don’t matter one bit. He wants to laugh in your face himself, and hell, I can’t blame him!” The cue cracked against the white ball. It bounced off the rails, sinking the two, the thirteen, the twelve, and finally the eight. 

Upon the table being cleared, Dice found that he could move again, and scrambled out of the now severely melted ice. Cuphead and Mugman saw his efforts and frantically followed suit. “Alrighty!” Mango trilled. “Let’s get you fellas to the man in charge!” The hustler leaned over until his chin almost touched the edge of the table, and finally opened his grin. Strangely enough, a bright light began pouring out of his mouth as he opened it wider. “Oh, golly,” Cuphead muttered in half-disgust. “Is the exit… in there?”

“Where else would it be, silly?” Mangosteen asked quizzically. Dice had nothing to say to that, and began striding towards the unconventional doorway undeterred. “Jehoshaphat, boss, you haven’t changed a bit,” chuckled his inoperative employee. 

“Maybe so,” Dice conceded as the boys started reluctantly following him out. “But I’ve got a few choice words for the boss. And for once, they’re words I’ve never said before.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much for your patience! this one needed a bit more polishing before posting, so i took another day. i have art of this act's bosses up on my DA, so you can head on over and check out that if you like. anyway, i'll see you all in a couple of weeks! where things start getting real... well, real-er.


	14. Tip of the Tongue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoa man, things happen here. uh, i'm tired, love you guys, hope you like the chapter! last "separate subplot" thingy left before everything converges and stuff.

“Goodness me, what was I even thinking, coming back here…”

The Devil’s Casino had scarcely changed since Weepy had been there last, over ten years ago. The bright, overbearing atmosphere of the place was stirring up memories the farmer had believed were gone from his mind. If he didn’t have Moe beside him to keep him focused, Weepy was sure he would be sat up against a wall with his face in his hands. 

“You were thinkin’ we’d figure out what the hell happened to the boys,” Moe reminded him. “Well, it was the vet’s idea, but we were all thinkin’ it. And maybe we will find somethin’. But we sure as hell ain’t gonna make any stupid contracts this time around, I’ll tell you that much,” he added gruffly. 

Weepy almost felt reassured by that statement, but his satisfaction was immediately cancelled out by a slew of equally intrusive thoughts. “But what will we do if we are accosted by the Devil? Or whoever he may have replaced that King Dice with?”

“We’ll have… as pleasant a conversation as we can,” Moe answered coyly. “If they try to pull anything on us, we bail. We ain’t in debt no more, the Devil can’t get to us if he isn’t owed our souls.” 

“Are you sure?”

“… Well, gee, as sure as I can be. I ain’t a goddamned… occult scholar or anything,” Moe pointed out sardonically. “Just trust me, okay? The Devil’s got nothing to hold our feet to the fire about.”

Weepy bit his lip and let his face relax a little. “Alright. That does make me feel a bit better,” he admitted before looking around. “So where should we start looking?”

“Mm. Wherever the others ain’t looking, I s’pose,” Moe reasoned. There were four small teams dispersed around the casino, made up of the former debtors that the farmers, Cagney and Werner had managed to round up for the investigation/potential rescue mission at the casino. Him and Weepy made up one, and the other three consisted of Cagney and Hilda, Werner and Kahl, and Grim and Beppi. The others had either been too inconvenient to contact, or assumed to not want anything to do with the casino or even the brothers. Moe didn’t consider splitting up to be the best course of action, but considering the indeterminately large size of the place it was the only way they’d cover any ground. Besides, they’d all agreed to meet at the front entrance in twenty minutes, whether they’d found something or not. The casino was more or less a maze, but Hilda had pointed out that plenty of the then-debtors who had run from their exchange had found the entrance without much trouble. 

And if one or two groups didn’t make it back, well, that would be promptly added to the list of things to look for. But at least the casino was confusing by design, and not some kind of unpredictable demon magic. 

“...Well, I recall the boys saying that they’d been swindled at a craps table,” Weepy murmured. “Perhaps they were lured to the same game this time around?”

“Or they’re dealin’,” Moe countered sardonically. He still wasn’t fully convinced the brothers hadn’t gone and joined the Devil and his wretched staff. That was what the Devil had proposed to them, after they’d taken everyone’s contracts by force. Weepy had wondered from time to time what would happen if the two had accepted that offer, to which Moe would always bluntly reply that he wouldn’t be alive to wonder about it. 

“Well, either way, we should…” Weepy trailed off, slowing down. Moe slowed down with him and followed his eyes towards a figure in an olive-colored suit, facing the two of them with an air of purpose. He looked familiar, or at least his face did. “G-Gosh, that’s not…” stammered Weepy nervously. 

“I think it is,” Moe muttered, still trying to put together the pieces in his head. The figure advanced, clearly not in the mood to wait for them to know what was going on. 

“Evening, boys! It’s been too long, hasn’t it, too long indeed!” he exclaimed, walking closer. There was no mistaking the resemblance now. 

“Y-You’re… you’re Kettle,” Weepy whispered, apparently afraid to say it any louder. The man laughed. 

“Yes, and you’re Weepy! But that’s not your real name, is it?” he replied quizzically. “Just like Kettle was never really mine.”

“I… well, I suppose not,” Weepy admitted. “But that-that was a long time ago.”

“Whatever names we had are gone,” Moe stayed firmly. “We don’t know ‘em, so they ain’t been used in years, not since before the contract.”

“Don’t worry, I know all about that!” Kettle chuckled. “The same thing happened to me, you know.”

“What are you doing here?” Moe asked, shifting the topic of conversation to something less uncomfortable. “Alive, I might add?”

“Oh, I’m working for the big man,” Kettle explained proudly, adjusting his lapels and scanning the large, crowded room. “I’ve got the floor tonight, and it’s up to me to make sure that everything for swimmingly.”

“You’re working for the Devil?” Weepy squeaked, looking more anxious than Moe had seen him in the past several months combined. He was even wringing his hands, a habit Moe thought he’d broken long ago. “Wh-What about the cups?”

Kettle put a finger to his mustache and shook his head idly. “Now, now, there’s no need to worry about them,” he insisted gently, putting a hand on Weepy’s shoulder. “I mean, it’s been so long, and we never really got to know each other, did we, **Oswald**?”

At that question Weepy’s eyes went wide. His hand-wringing came to a stiff halt, and his quivering lip froze. Moe’s eyebrows shot up and he turned to Kettle indignantly. “The hell did you do to him?!” he snapped. Kettle kept his hand on Weepy’s shoulder and turned towards Moe. 

“Well, now, you said it yourself. You don’t remember your names, not since before the contract. Now why do you think that is?” he asked slowly. Moe hated how goddamn cordial he sounded. 

“We changed our names when the contract was made. Well, Psy came up with ‘em, but…” Moe trailed off. Something was clicking. 

“You didn’t void your names,” Kettle clarified solemnly. “You just lost them. We’re all fools for that, really. A name is a powerful thing, especially where the Devil is concerned. But none of you would know that, how could you? You were only a farmer, **Joseph**.”

Moe’s stomach seized up. It felt like his insides had crystallized, and compressed down to a speck of dust. His arms and legs felt numb, and anything he had planned to say in response was forced from his mind. 

“I would have said it all, but… well, I assume you’re hurting enough as is,” Kettle remarked, walking off between the two of them. “Besides, your circumstance is hardly your fault. Your only sin is remaining idle.”

\---

“Are you c-c-certain you know where we’re g-g-going?” Grim asked tentatively. The question was probably pointless; it was unlikely that his coworker even had a destination in mind.

“Certain? Ha! I ain’t certain about nothin’ but the fact that I want the both of us to stay sharp, an’ that’s what matters,” Beppi pointed out jauntily. “You come in here too unsure about yourself, the Devil’s gonna put stuff in your head, say ‘here, here’s what you’re sure about,’ and before you know it poof! Soul’s gone, you’re up a creek without a paddle. You really wanna help out the cup boys, right? That’s why you came, huh?”

Grim tensed at being put on the spot. “I-I-I…”

“The answer’s yes, even if you don’t quite believe it yourself! By this time the Devil woulda been all ‘hey, join my staff,’ or ‘hey, how’s about the same damn contract as before?’ and you’d be in a real pickle then!”

“... You don’t h-h-have to replicate his voice so p-p-perfectly…” Grim muttered, finding himself strangely uncomfortable. “And what will we e-e-even do if we find them? O-o-or… him?”

“We- _hell_ , if we find the Devil himself, we’re outta here,” Beppi answered matter-of-factly, quirking his eyebrow. “Doubt he’ll pull any punches this time around, and unlike the brothers we don’t got guns in our fingers,” he remarked, pantomiming the cups’s shooting motion for emphasis. 

“I thought we were c-c-certain about finding the boys?” Grim asked, confused. Beppi rolled his eyes in response.

“We don’t gotta make tracks all the way back to the carnival. Heck, I think we’d run outta giddyup by the time we got to the beach!” Beppi joked, clapping Grim on the back before exaggeratedly scratching his head. “Well, I would. You’ve prolly got the lungs to run all the way to the first isle without slowin’ down.”

“That doesn’t m-m-mean I’m particularly athletic,” Grim returned with an air of cynicism. “I still have h-h-hardly any muscles to speak of.” Despite his slightly sour tone, Grim was somewhat grateful that Beppi was the one to accompany him on this “investigation” of sorts. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t holding back a great deal of unfortunate memories, and having Beppi there to reduce the chintzy, sinister nature of the casino to a joke was making his undesired return to the place… marginally more bearable.

“Grim, you’re one of a kind,” Beppi chuckled. “Don’t go changin’ on me, alright?”

“Well, I tried that a-a-already, and it didn’t work out,” Grim replied, finding himself relaxed enough to try a joke himself. Beppi laughed out loud, his voice echoing in the high-ceilinged room.

“Man, and you think your comedic timing is a lost cause!” he exclaimed. “Comin’ back to this dump was worth it just see ya outside your damn tower for once!”

“Now, the two of you are an interesting case.”

Grim tensed again at the new but not unfamiliar voice. He turned around carefully. Beppi, less so. “And what’s your deal, mister… Kettle?” he asked, his tone of voice growing more confused with every word. Grim could relate. Neither he nor the clown had known the kettle very well before he died, and the same was true vice versa. Minus the death part. But despite that, the identity of the man before them was unmistakable, even if his appearance and stature had drastically changed. That was the most confusing part, somehow, even more so than the fact that he was alive at all. In fact, with the suit and build, he almost looked like…

“King Dice…” Grim muttered.

“See, you’re observant, and apparently a decent partner for conversation,” Kettle said, sounding as friendly as Grim remembered him to be. “But I must admit I only saw one of your shows, and then… well, you became a rumor of mythical proportions,” he remarked coyly. With that Grim’s tongue was officially tied in a knot. Thankfully, Beppi stepped in front of him to pick up his slack. 

“Look, if you’re gonna sass Matchstick, the least you could do is make sure we’re not too damn clueless to be offended by said sassing,” Beppi demanded in a faux-accusatory tone. Or was it genuine? Grim couldn’t read Beppi’s mind in a million years. 

Kettle chuckled heartily and put his hands on his hips. “As much as I would enjoy a lovely conversation I would have killed for in years past, you’re not the first pair I’ve done this song and dance with. And I must exempt my gracious employer from any and all frivolous distractions posthaste.”

Beppi’s eyes widened. “Your employer?” Kettle quirked an eyebrow facetiously.

“You play the clown so very often, you forget what it feels like to be in over your head, mister **Campbell**.”

The number of times Grim had seen Beppi rendered speechless could be counted on one hand, and Kettle had done it without effort. And with a… name. A name Grim had never heard before. It couldn’t, perchance, be his –

“I haven’t forgotten you, firebreather,” Kettle interrupted his train of thought. Grim flinched and bit his lip as he met the man’s gaze. He had to get out of there, but he couldn’t just leave Beppi in whatever strange stupor he’d been put into, and there was no way he could carry him so –

“Gosh, I almost don’t need to invoke your name,” observed Kettle, audibly smirking behind his mustache. “But mercy was the folly of my predecessor, a folly he continues to pay the price for as we speak. I’m sorry, **Myron**.”

Memories stabbed through Grim’s mind like icicles. Muted, muddled exchanges of times past came searing sharply into focus, and nothing had ever hurt so much. It wasn’t until Kettle was almost out of view that Grim could even feel his fingers, much less hear himself think. And by that point, the only thing on his mind was leaving the casino and never returning.

\---

“Y’know, if you hadn’t logicked up an excuse for us to feel like we could run around this madhouse without getting lost, I’d readily believe that the horned cad behind this operation was actively messing with us.”

“Oh, hush, I don’t know where we are either,” Hilda griped, trying to find literally any recognizable landmark around them. Unfortunately, everything in the stupid casino looked the exact same. “Besides, this whole ‘go save the cups’ thingamabob was your idea.”

“First of all, no, it was the jerry’s,” Cagney argued back. “Second, when you were spewing out said logic, I assumed you had some kind of actual idea of what’s where in this godforsaken labyrinthine… trash heap.”

Hilda raised one eyebrow as high up as she could possibly get it. “Cagney, I’ve only been in here once. Ten years ago. You run out of pocket change for common sense?”

Cagney countered her eyebrow raise with a deep, sardonic squint. “You’re a real comedian,” he returned dryly, out of energy to banter. Hilda laughed.

“Hell, you’ve been here more times than me!” she exclaimed, beside herself at the realization. Cagney raised a corrective finger in defense.

“Look, the second time I was here the place was busted, stuff wasn’t even in the same damn place, alright?” he snapped defensively.

“Ohhh, alrighty, if you say so…” taunted Hilda, unable to keep the grin off her face. Cagney made a face, and she snickered again. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that the main reason Hilda had agreed to go on this weird casino quest was because Cagney was on board with it. He was hardly ever on board with anything, and Hilda was fully prepared to poke fun at whatever weird sappy loyalty he felt he owed to the literal children who had probably just decided to free their souls because they felt like it. Okay, that was a little harsh. They probably did it because it was the right thing to do, or something. What kind of motive was that, anyway?

“Hey, you fellas lost too?”

Hilda bit her lip in annoyance at the sound of Kahl’s voice. A look to the left presented the underwhelming reward of him and the veteran, looking as hopelessly lost as her and Cagney probably did.

“It’s… a possibility that the casino does have some kind of indiscernible magic mumbo-jumbo,” Hilda admitted, cringing inwardly at the sheepishness seeping into her voice. 

“Zat comes as no surprise,” Werner said, a strange air of reassurance in his own tone of voice. “Everyzing in here is eizer suspiciously convenient or outrageously inconvenient. Ze question still remains of how to navigate it.”

“I can’t find any patterns,” reported Kahl, clearly disappointed in himself. “I’d need weeks, maybe months of diagnostics and observation of this blasted place for any kinda progress to be made.”

Cagney crossed his arms impatiently. “So what on earth are we supposed to do when we have _no idea what we’re doing?_ ”

“ **Lodewick** and **Hughes** , those are interesting ones.” 

Hilda knew that voice, and had honestly hoped she’d never hear it again. Another terrible thought, but Hilda was nothing if not honest with herself. He looked different, but it was him alright. 

“I never knew them at all, did I?” he asked rhetorically, putting a hand to his chin as he examined Werner and the doctor’s now confused, lost expressions. “I get the impression that he’s got quite the history, though,” he added after Werner began shaking and muttering indiscernible things to himself in his first language. “But alas, another missed opportunity.”

“The Devil bring you back to life or something?” Cagney guessed, hiding his concern for whatever had happened to the others with a thick layer of informality.

“Very astute!” Kettle remarked. “I suppose you _were_ the only one of those in close proximity who bothered to get to know me, when I was first settling down in this odd place.”

“That was a long time ago,” muttered Cagney. “Then you –”

“Then _you_ got very, very lost. Both of you did, but I felt the worst about you. I tried to accommodate the terrible image in which you had remade yourself, but evidently I was a bit too heavy-handed a reminder of your mistake. A role I’m afraid I must continue filling, **Art**.”

It was like a blade had gone straight through his heart. Hilda felt a needle scrape at her brain as well. A quiet, awkward scene or two surfaced, half the context restored. 

“And you never wanted anything to do with me,” Kettle remarked, turning his attention towards Hilda. “Which, ironically, is why you never wanted anything to do with me.”

“What the hell is even the point of all this,” Hilda jeered flatly. “You go to work for ol’ Scratch, hold our pasts over our heads like the goddamned sword of Damocles, and for what? So you can make us feel as diddled as you did when you lost a bet and had to move into a forest fulla strangers who just so happened to all like keepin’ their business to themselves?”

Kettle’s eyebrows went up just a little, and he averted his gaze. He blinked a few times, and Hilda wondered what the hell was going through his head. 

“I could ask you a similar question, **Esther**.”

Well, she wasn’t going to find out anytime soon.

\---

“Oh, thank god! Here they come!”

Moe finally released his temples from the clutches of his fingers and looked up to see the remaining four members of their failed party exiting the casino’s front door, all in various forms of dazed and ticked off. “He name-freeze you fellas too?” he asked disjointedly. He didn’t even know what to think anymore.

“What do you think, smart guy,” Cagney attempted to snap back, his voice not nearly venomous enough to communicate the extent of his intended sarcasm.

“Well, there ain’t nothin’ we can do against that,” Beppi griped. “It hurts, it’s easy for ‘im, an’ he’s still got a whole half of our dumb ol’ names to throw at us.”

“Might as well knock our numbers down, too,” Kahl added, hitching his thumb over at Werner. Moe hadn’t noticed it, but he was sweating buckets. Not to mention the muttering. He guessed that made sense, none of the rest of them had an entire suppressed war’s worth of people throwing around their old names.

“I-I don’t want us to give up so easily, but…” Weepy trailed off. Everyone mirrored his uncertain defeated expression. Everyone except for Hilda.

“Well, you’re right, Weepy, we shouldn’t,” she agreed, standing up with a bit of difficulty. “Because that guy in there ain’t Kettle. He’s got parts of ‘im, but it ain’t him, and this not-Kettle, he ain’t a great guy. Yeah, sure, maybe half of us didn’t even know ‘im, and us isle one people weren’t all that hospitable, but that ain’t no reason to take us out in the most dishonorable way possible! It’s goddamn rude, in fact! I reckon the majority of us were kind enough to not give the cups all the hell we could right off the bat when they came for our contracts, I mean hell, they were still kids after all.”

“You’re n-n-not wrong…” muttered Grim.

“So at this point, it’s personal. We’re going back in,” Hilda insisted. “If nothing else, to show that awful excuse for a Devil’s lackey who’s boss.”

“What about the cups?” Cagney prompted sardonically.

Hilda smirked. “Well, we won’t know unless we get Kettle out of the way first, will we?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> man there's just, so much name-dropping going on here, and probably most of it sounds pretty wacky and like, what even. more detail will be provided, all will make sense, in a time when i'm not deliriously uploading this chapter at 1 am. have a lovely day! :)


	15. Deep Blue Sea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whew, story climax! the title is derived from the phrase "between the devil and the deep blue sea," the deep blue sea being an equally formidable force as the devil. well, we know who the devil is, so who might be his deep blue sea...

“Guess that takes care of that, for now.” 

The Devil waved his clawed hand haphazardly to disperse the smoke cloud through which he had been viewing Kettle’s handiwork. He had to admit the man didn’t put on that great a show, he even sounded a little too genuine for comfort at times, but at least he had the wherewithal to go straight for the jugular. Reminded him a little of his former second-in-command. Speaking of which…

The Devil cast a glance to the floor in front of his desk, looking for any signs of re-entry from the downright headache-inducing labyrinth he and Kettle had crafted. And the headaches didn’t just belong to those they’d forced through the damn thing. The Devil could feel his brain frying at the mere thought of whatever the hell was taking them so long. One of the only compliments he’d ever paid Dice had pertained specifically to his ability to not blow his brains out over that stupid, grinning pool player. He only hoped he hadn’t underestimated said pool player’s lack of motivation.

After a few more minutes passed the Devil’s mind dwindled to what precisely he even planned on doing with Dice and the boys. Well, he knew what he was going to do with the cups, he’d already told them that, but his plans for Dice had only been made as far as ticking him off by hiring a new manager. And though that ship had definitely sailed, it hardly mattered at this point. The Devil’s long game was finally about to pay off. 

He turned his head slightly at a bright light in his peripheral vision. _Here they come._

“So you made it!” he remarked loudly, still not turning around all the way. “Suppose that means my old staff finally did something useful.”

“I got you half of that old staff, _boss_.”

The Devil grinned around his cigar. “You seem real interested in taking responsibility for something so unimpressive. Could it be that getting a few chumps to sign their souls down to Hell is all you’ve got to show after a hundred years?”

“I did my job, and I did it well,” Dice asserted in a low tone of voice behind him. “And I did it without a word of praise.”

At this the Devil chuckled, and finally turned to face his adversaries, propping his elbows on the desk in front of him. “Why the hell are you so damn interested in wanting praise from me, of all people, young **Delacroix**?”

He grinned as he saw the man’s eyes widen, his muscles tense. Invoking his name was the least of the slow, sweet torture the Devil had planned for him, but it was a hell of a treat to see him squirm as his carefully constructed façade began to –

“We made it through your dumb Hell-levels!” Cuphead shouted. “Now let our granddad go!”

The Devil’s eyes slowly slid over to the impudent child who was somehow still standing there. His brother, too. How the hell did a brother handle even translate between forms? He didn’t know and he didn’t care. “Nah,” he answered flatly. “Now hightail it out of here toot-sweet, kiddo.”

Cuphead’s eyes widened and he gritted his teeth angrily. “That wasn’t the deal we made,” he argued, voice thick with a hilarious attempt at rage. “You can’t just go back on an agreement like that.”

“What agreement, boy?” the Devil asked in pseudo-innocence. “If you’ve got a contract lying around with all three of our names on it, I’d love to see it.”

“What are you talking about?” Mugman returned uncertainly, voice wavering. Beside him, Dice pinched the bridge of his nose in annoyance. It was impossible to be completely mad at his defunct employee when he didn’t even tell the boys they’d been led down the primrose path.

“A deal in words ain’t a deal with me,” answered the Devil, as if he were formally explaining it to someone he’d never met before. “We never drew up terms and conditions, therefore, I ain’t obligated to give you squat.”

“What?!” Cuphead shouted, finger starting to glow blue. “You don’t think that would’ve been worth mentioning before you threw us down there?!”

“Pshaw, why’d I tell you that?” he scoffed. “Worked out in my favor, obviously. I mean, hell, why didn’t _you_ tell ‘em, Delacroix?”

He flinched again. Excellent. “Thought you drips would know that,” he griped under his breath. “Only reason the Devil ‘helped’ your little debtor friends was to satiate his goddamned neverending boredom. Couldn’t just zap ‘em into different forms, he needed to make a contract first. Why else d’you think he’d go through the trouble of swindling folks?”

“Thanks for the summary,” snarked the Devil before turning back to the boys. Evidently his attempt to get them to turn on each other had backfired, for the time being. The Devil slapped his desk a couple times, and it began shrinking and compressed until it settled in his clasped hand, having transformed into a long, golden pitchfork. “Now, back to the original topic of conversation, that being you kids getting out of here. So get.”

“We’re not leaving until you hold up your end of the deal!” Cuphead asserted, holding up his poised index finger. Mugman shakily did the same. The Devil quirked an eyebrow and summoned the coin he’d crafted earlier. “I don’t think you’re getting it, boys,” he tsked. “We don’t have anything to talk about. I hate your guts, sure, but I’ve got a way more pressing matter at hand,” he elaborated, flicking his eyes over to Dice. The coin went flying upwards. “If you fancy fighting, go right ahead!” he encouraged as the coin fell into his open palm. He grinned at the result, and the boys quickly changed back to their original, far more fragile forms. “It’ll be over pretty damn quick, now that I ain’t in the mood to bring you boys back from the dead every time you break apart.”

Their eyes widened ever so slightly, and sheepishly they lowered their fingers. Oddly enough, though, they didn’t leave. The Devil rolled his eyes. “Alright, alright, you boys can watch the show if you want.” He turned to Dice, who, like the well-trained right-hand-man he used to be, had remained unmoving thus far. Well, except when the Devil said…

“ **Franklin Delacroix**.” Dice gasped, as if all the air had been drawn from his lungs, and struggled to stay standing. “You’re stronger than most when it comes to invocation,” the Devil remarked. “Then again, I can’t expect anything less from my best consort.” Dice opened his mouth to snap back, but no words came out. “You had to have known why I brought that geezer back to life, really. And it sure as hell worked like a charm!” the Devil laughed. “You shoulda seen the look on your face when you first saw him! Hell, you shoulda seen your face when you saw that ad I put in the gazette! Absolutely priceless,” he insisted, shaking his head as he kept grinning. 

“As usual, your sense of humor’s real refined,” Dice returned sarcastically. “And yeah, sure enough, I got cranky. Congratulations.” 

Hmm. He wasn’t as self-conscious as he usually was. Any other day he’d deny that Kettle had bothered him at all. It admittedly wasn’t as fun to dangle his success in front of Dice’s face when he just… acknowledged it. What, was he bored or something? Well, things were about to get far more interesting anyway.

“Don’t congratulate me just yet, Delly, I wouldn’t be me if my plans had a foreseeable definite conclusion!” He took his cigar out from between his teeth, snuffed it out on his tongue, and flicked the butt Dice’s way. It hit the front of his shirt lightly, leaving a small black mark on the purple fabric. “See, despite the fact that I’m a mite stingy with my compliments, I like having you under my employment. And by that, I mean I _will_ like it in the future, very much. For many years I’ve tried to keep you in line, and after so many years of being… serviceable, you crossed that line. You ran off, got your broken bones healed the long way, and had a few little playdates with these pieces of cannon fodder! And now, well, I don’t expect you’ll ever want to come back. You break my heart, you really do.” A quick flash of regret. Damn, he’d done better than he thought. “But don’t look so down and out about it!” the Devil reassured, turning up Dice’s chin with the tip of his pitchfork. “I’ll make sure you enjoy yourself every moment of your return to form. The same way I fancied fixing up the cup boys before they so ungraciously declined my offer of employment around a year ago.”

Mugman made a whiny noise off to the side. “You’re going to control him?!” he cried.

The Devil laughed out loud. “Boy, I’ve been controlling ol’ Dicey for many many years, if anything this’ll be a logical progression! Of course, he’ll still be the same on the inside. Wouldn’t want you to be unaware of the retribution I’m exacting on you.”

“I assume you intend to send me after the boys? The debtors? Send me back to square one while I watch?” prompted Dice dryly. 

The Devil laughed again and lightly rapped his former manager on the head with the curve of a pitchfork prong. “You know me too well! Though I assure you mister, I know you better.”

Suddenly, a pain shot through the Devil’s hand as one of the cup boys shot a blue bolt at it. The coin fell from his hand, and before his could react Cuphead dashed past him in a cloud of smoke, scooping it off the ground. The kid dashed back, and the Devil realized that the two of them had run in front of Dice. “You’re dense if you think we’re just gonna let you turn Dice into some kinda mindless… thing!” asserted Cuphead. He flipped the coin, and it landed in their favor as they started turning human again. 

“Psh, tromping through Hell with one of your worst enemies was enough to make the three of you thick as thieves?” the Devil asked quizzically. 

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Mugman denied. “Dice still did a lot of really, really bad stuff. But he’s been real great with getting better, and I’ll be… I’ll be damned if you take all that away from him!” he shouted. Even his brother looked positively astonished to hear something like that come out of his mouth. “I’m so sick and tired of you messing with everyone just ‘cause you can, ‘cause you’ve got nothing better to do! That’s a stupid reason to do something! Some of the people who’ve made contracts with you had way better reasons to do what they did compared to you!”

“Oho, suppose I gave you a bit of a backbone by accident!” the Devil remarked coyly. “Alright. Let’s play keep-away. See how long it takes. Oh, and –” He stabbed his pitchfork very suddenly in Cuphead’s direction, startling him into dropping the coin. “You won’t be needing that, I think,” finished the Devil with a grin as he used the tip of his pitchfork to knock the small object away. 

\---

As the cups fought with his superior, Dice struggled to stay behind the former as they were forced to dodge and duck all sorts of attacks that the Devil was probably making up on the fly. The coin hadn’t been reacquired by either party, as it was continuously knocked to the floor every time someone picked it up. The boys were lucky they weren’t dead already, with all the close shaves they were having. The Devil fired a bolt of flaming electricity at Mugs, and he ducked out of the way a split second before reverting to his more fragile form. He gestured aggressively with his pitchfork in Cuphead’s direction, pushing him back towards the wall at a high speed. Right as his handle cracked upon impact with the stone he turned human once more, getting his bell rung as opposed to shattered. For kids one would expect to be used to fighting without any real consequences, they were handling themselves pretty damn well. As for Dice, he couldn’t do much besides watch. The Devil never had a coherent plan for anything, so there was to way even his old right-hand-man could know precisely what he was going to use against the boys. Except manipulation, that was a given. 

“You must care about ol’ Dice an awful lot if you ain’t even thought to ask about your old man.” And there it was. “You even wondering where he’s at, while we fight over a fella you boys shouldn’t even care about anymore?”

“Well, I should hope you freed him!” Mugman returned, firing a charge shot that was deftly blocked. “At the very least I suppose we should be thankful that you aren’t sending him after the two of us.”

“As tempting as it was, my man is out on the casino floor, doing his job,” the Devil explained. “And what a fine job he’s doing. But hey, kudos for thinking about him. Can’t say he’s doing the same for you.”

“Yeah, well, what if you’re makin’ him watch?!” demanded Cuphead, dodging a ball of fire. “From the inside? Like you just said you’re planning on doing with Dice?”

“Hm, clever kid,” admitted the Devil. “Still, even if he wasn’t bein’ puppeted around by a version of himself he’d rather forget, I don’t think you two’d even be in his top ten, thinking-wise. Even years ago, you boys were only a means to an end.” He advanced towards Dice, and Mugman dashed between the two and held up a charged shot before setting it off in the Devil’s face.

“Maybe that’s how we started out, but after awhile Elder Kettle really cared about us! He said that he realized he had to pay us back for making him feel less alone, and… and he did!” cried Mugman. “He was a great granddad, and you killed him! You did it slowly, sure, but folks aren’t supposed to get old as fast as he did!” He lunged for the Devil’s pitchfork, but Dice’s old boss saw it coming and yanked it out of reach.

“Careful, mug-boy, this baby ain’t no ordinary magic pitchfork. One touch and the power’d tear a little brat like you from the inside out,” the Devil warned with a grin. “An’ I don’t see why you’d put that old bloke on so high a pedestal, anyway. He didn’t even bring you to life! Hell, you boys practically jumped outta my head after around half a minute of thought! That’s how much time you paper-thin drips took to create. Thirty. Puny. Seconds. And you can’t even pay me a single thanks for giving you all I did? Shameful, really.”

As Mugman kept trading barbs with the Devil, Cuphead dashed over to Dice and gestured for him to crouch closer. “I have a plan,” he whispered. “And don’t you dare say no.”

Dice didn’t crouch, but nodded to indicate he was listening. “What do you have in mind.”

“That pitchfork. He can do whatever the hell he wants with it, right?” Cuphead asked.

“Yeah. He keeps its power at bay, really. It’s only ‘cause of how hard he’s fought with it that he needs a contract to do half the things he wants with it. At its full power it doesn’t need any song and dance to get it to do its thing.”

“Great. In that case, I need you to distract him.”

“Hmm? Why?”

“You’re who he wants, right? I’ll let Mugs know about the distraction, he’ll probably understand it nonetheless, but he can’t know the whole plan. He wouldn’t let me go through with it in a million years.” Dice finally glanced down at Cuphead and saw an unwanted fear in his eyes. He had a pretty good idea of what the whole plan was. Cuphead locked eyes with him, and Dice nodded in understanding. 

“Hey, _boss_ ,” he called in a loud tone, fully embodying the all-knowing manager persona he’d been progressively leaving behind over the past few days. “You wanna know something?” 

The Devil turned his attention away from Mugman and grinned. “I don’t know, do I?” he returned. “You finally ready to put this stupid, stale nice-guy charade to rest?”

“On the contrary,” Dice countered, quirking an eyebrow and matching his grin. “I just want you to be ready to accept the fact that I’ll never play second fiddle to you again, as long as I live.”

His former boss laughed louder than he ever had since they showed up. “Is that so? Gotta be the richest notion I’ve ever heard. I’ve kept you by my side for over a hundred years. I’ve protected you, given you power, infamy, everything you could ever want. I made you a force to be reckoned with, **Franklin Delacroix**.”

In the span of those statements, the Devil had suddenly gotten extremely close to Dice. And at that invocation the dark-skinned man was frozen to the spot, unable to react to the Devil’s clawed hand seizing his shoulder and squeezing it until the fabric of his shirt gave in and grew dark red as the claws dug into his skin. “We were like father and son, you and I,” the Devil continued, his voice sounding continuously farther away. “You came to me at your worst, and I, well, I coulda sent you down to Hell straightaway. But you, you had this idea in your head that you could be of some kind of use to me. So, I used you. Sure, you were broken at first…”

Memories and voices passed through Dice’s eyes and ears. _You’ve gotta change that voice, kid. No one’s gonna take you seriously with such a grating dialect. You wanna be taken seriously, don’t you? I thought so. And really, folks don’t like a crab. You’ve gotta catch those flies with honey, y’see. Pleasantries will get you mighty far in this life…_

“But fixing you up turned out to be a fun little project. Real distracting, in the best way.” That old feeling came back. A hatred, an obligated loyalty, a profound admiration. The gnarled hand slowly dislodging his clavicle slowly began to feel somewhat comforting, and almost like it could be –

“AAGH, what in blazing fires of Hell do you think you’re doing?!” 

As Dice’s vision stopped swimming and the pain in his shoulder suddenly got really noticeable, he could just make out Mugman tackling the Devil to the floor and kicking the pitchfork out of his hand. Cuphead ran over to the pitchfork in slow motion, and Dice smacked his temple with the heel of his palm until everything came into sharp, normally-paced focus.

“Mugs! Get out of the way!” he shouted. Mugman looked up in confusion, then put the pieces together in his mind.

“Cuphead, no! The Devil said –”

“I know what he goddamned said, get the hell out of the way! NOW!”

Dice dove for the blue cup, despite his injured shoulder, and pulled him away just as Cuphead’s gloved hands wrapped around the glimmering shaft of the trident. The Devil’s eyes widened, and Cuphead quickly swung the weapon around until it was pointed right at their adversary. A massive red bolt shot out of the tips of the pitchfork, and struck the Devil in a crimson inferno just as the boy’s porcelain head exploded into a million pieces.

“Cuphead –!” Mugman gasped, squirming out of Dice’s arms. He winced at the boy’s hand on his shoulder and let him go. Mugman ran over to his brother’s body and slowly lifted the red-striped straw off the floor with shaking hands. “H-He’s…” he stammered, gathering a small collection of tiny shards from the floor. “Isn’t there any way we can…”

“Hm. Being that heroic ain’t gonna keep him out of Hell.”

Dice and Mugman looked over to the Devil, honestly surprised that he wasn’t dead as well. Instead he was… human. Cuphead had gotten rid of the Devil by simply ridding him of his power.

“Gotta say, though, he knows his irony,” he continued dully, getting to his feet. “Even if he doomed everyone he’s s’posed to care about.”

“What are you talking about?” Mugman asked, holding Cuphead’s straw to his chest.

The Devil rolled his eyes and ran his hands over his now hornless head in discomfort. “What do you think a devil’s for? Now that I’m not me anymore, Hell’s just gonna do whatever it damn well pleases. Probably won’t just stay in Hell anymore, either. Your little Isle’d be the first place to go…”

“I’ll do it,” Dice muttered.

“What?” asked Mugman and the Devil in unison. 

“I’ll be the Devil,” he clarified, walking over to the trident. “You put me through all kinds of suffering, made me sign all sorts of contracts, just in case such a thing happened, is that right?”

“I- Well, I didn’t think I’d give up my throne like this!” the Devil snapped, folding his arms indignantly. “In fact, I ain’t givin’ up my throne at all! Give me that pitchfork.”

Dice shook his head. “The cup made you human. Your body would crumble if you held this thing now. But me…” He lifted the pitchfork, and instantly currents upon currents of energy shot through his body. Everything trembled, and for a moment Dice expected to fall over. But within seconds, everything fit into place. It felt as if the golden implement had been crafted specifically for him to hold.

“Hm. Well, good luck,” the Devil muttered nonchalantly, turning on his heel and heading for the exit. “Call me when the eternal boredom of being Hell’s denizen takes over.”

“Um, Dice?” Mugman asked quietly. Dice turned away from the man who used to be the Devil and looked down at the distraught child. “Is there… is there anything you can do… about my brother? Now that you’re, um, the new Devil, I mean…”

“Hmm… I think I’ve got an idea,” Dice said. “I think your brother would make a fine partner in business. Why don’t I have him work for me?”

Mugman bit his lip. “I… I’m not sure…”

“I’m gonna take this casino off the map,” Dice stated flatly. It hurt him to say it still, even after all of the time he’d spent rethinking himself. “I’m gonna leave you human, let you live a life of your own. I’m gonna let your granddad go free, and I’m gonna make sure those debtors never have to think about any dealings they’ve done with my old boss’s joint. The only job I’ve got is managing Hell. Everything else is just meaningless nonsense the Devil tacked on after centuries and centuries of the same old schlock. I can’t promise I won’t end up doing the same thing, but… it’ll be a long time coming, don’t you worry,” he chuckled. Mugman chuckled in return.

“Gosh, Dice, you really went soft since we first made that deal a year ago,” he commented with a quizzical smirk. Dice laughed aloud, a familiar laugh.

“You’ve gotten pretty damn spunky yourself, cupface,” he pointed out. 

Both of them flinched as the door to the Devil’s office was forcibly pushed open across the room from them. On the other side of the door was quite a few of the former debtors, all looking confused, battered, and tired. After staring wordlessly at the strange and empty scene before them, the short gardener was the first to speak up.

“...So what the hell happened in here?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much for reading! we'll just have one more chapter after this one to wrap things up, then, uh... gosh, it'll be over.
> 
> art will be up on DA in a couple of days! thanks as always for reading!


	16. What's the Big Deal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alrighty, this'll be a bit different than my usual ending fare. but after writing such a big crazy climax i thought it best to bring the story to a calm, reflective end.

“I hear this is a reputable dive?”

Goopy looked up from wiping a glass clean to see who the strangely familiar voice belonged to. The guy looked tired. And dirty. And not like he had money for drinks. But that was what tabs were for. 

“Sure is, mister. What’s your poison?” he asked, putting the freshly cleaned glass on the counter in front of the new customer. The wild-haired man stepped forward and not-so-gracefully seated himself on one of the barstools. “Something strong,” he muttered. “Don’t care what, long as it’s quality.”

“Mm-hmm,” Goopy hummed in reply, turning towards the cabinet of drinks behind him. “Let’s startcha off with a pint of whiskey, then.”

“Sounds promising.” That voice really did sound familiar, and Goopy could not for the life of him pinpoint where he’d heard it before. “What’s your name, mister?” the big man asked casually, filling the glass with whiskey. 

The guy just grunted and took the glass. “What’s yours?” he countered, before gulping the drink down with surprising gusto. 

Goopy’s eyebrows went up a bit. “I’m shocked you’ve never heard the name Goopy le Grande!” he exclaimed. “You must be from the big city or somethin’. But y’know, a few days ago I just so happened to remember the name I used to have, before I, ah, got mixed up in a silly little feud about ten years back,” Goopy explained vaguely. “An’ I tell ya, after forgettin’ what the hell my old name was, I never woulda pegged me for a Louis!” he continued with a deep chuckle. “Yessir that’s right, I was once one monsieur Louis Grant. I must be the least French Frenchman around, eh?”

The man said nothing, just pushed his glass back over to Goopy and pointed at the whiskey bottle. Goopy shrugged and kept talking as he refilled it. “‘Course, I still went with ‘le Grande,’ proll’y the most French thing I’ve ever done in my life. But it ain’t like I particularly wanna be a Louis at this point, hell, I renamed myself Goopy an’ I’m stickin’ with it!”

The strange customer finally looked up from his drink and quirked an eyebrow. “You don’t hate the name you picked for yourself?” he asked. 

“Uh… no. Why would I?” Goopy asked. 

“Well, you made a contract, didn’t you? I’d think you wouldn’t want to be constantly reminded of that one time you sold your soul to the Devil.” The glass was emptied again, and pushed back towards Goopy, who refilled it without much thought as he kept talking.

“Eh, wasn’t all that traumatic for me. I mean, don’t you dare tell this to mister Art Phyllis, but the whole ordeal didn’t change up my life all that much. I was still me at the end of it all, an’ I had some fun to boot! Even if I did get the tar beaten outta me by a pair of kids,” Goopy elaborated, careful not to idly lean his entire weight on the bar. It had already been splintered in a couple places over the past year. 

The guy murmured his understanding. “Art Phyllis, that’s… the gardener, right?”

“Correctamundo, mister. No one calls ‘im that, though, my glorious self included. Can’t blame ‘im, it’s a pretty funny name. Wouldn’t say it’s any sillier than Cagney Carnation, but I don’t make the rules,” Goopy shrugged. “Matter of fact, I make staying outta that little guy’s business priority numero uno.”

“...Mm, yeah, I remember him. Just had tunnel vision, didn’t even ask the usual ‘ohh, is this one of those things where you actually just take my soul and I get tricked or whatever?’ I mean, I’d say ‘bout two-thirds of my clients asked somethin’ like that at some point, but nah, Phyllis, he was all in…” Goopy raised an eyebrow at that. The guy was undoubtedly drunk by this point, if his progressively slurred speech was anything to go by, but his words could possibly explain why Goopy was so sure he’d heard his voice before.

“Takin’ souls, you say? Didja used to work for that casino before it shut down a few days ago?” he asked nonchalantly, opening another bottle and subtly sliding the whole thing into his customer’s hand. The guy didn’t even question it, just took a swig and laughed sloppily.

“Hyeah, you could say that. Could even say… that casino worked for me! But, y’know, you… you _could_ say that. I-I-I ain’t sayin’ that,” he stammered quickly, taking another swig of the liquor. Goopy’s suspicion must have been showing.

“So, wonder what happened with the Devil, after the place shut down,” Goopy mused conversationally, watching the shorter man’s face as he spoke. “I would expect he just packed up the place, but eh, some things don’t add up for that. The red cup, for example, he’s, uh… kicked the bucket, I hear. Must be tearing up that brother of his…” Goopy trailed off solemnly for a moment, before returning to his original train of thought. “But anyway, if that Devil bumped ‘im off, I don’t think he’d just up an’ close down his big ol’ house of soul-stealing.”

“He wouldn’t,” the guy murmured. “The cup boy didn’t matter to ‘im, not really. Just a damn nuisance, needed to be put in his place, but it wasn’t about just him, that’d be stupid.” He groaned and looked up towards Goopy, seizing his unkempt hair in his fingers. “You got me, okay? Just spit in my face an’ be done with it.”

The boxer grinned. “So you are him, huh? In that case... have another drink. Whiskey still what ya want?”

“What’re you talkin’ about…”

“Like I said, your big ol’ science experiment didn’t do much of a number on me. I got just what I needed, an’ I came back jus’ as handsome as before. Can’t do much complaining about that, mister Devil.” He slid another bottle over towards the man who had, up until a few days ago probably, had been some kind of immortal demon. Something to think about, Goopy supposed.

“Heh, well, s’ a rare opinion, apparently. Anyone who saw me right after I got changed up wants nothin’ to do with me, and… ahh, well, I guess I can’t blame ‘em. Didja know… immortal demons can’t get sloshed? I’ve been drinkin’ for centuries, an’ yeah, it tastes good, but man, actually bein’ able to drink ‘til I can’t hear myself think is somethin’ else. Dunno how all you folks survived not havin’ that for what, uh… ten years? That’s a lot of time for you, ain’t it…” the Devil trailed off. Goopy wanted to laugh; when he’d made his deal, the Devil had been so articulate in his wording, even though Goopy hadn’t needed much convincing. The big man was definitely not the type for conversation, but he distinctly remembered appreciating how the Devil used his words. Thus, hearing that rough, hypnotic voice of his spill out rambling, disjointed sentences in a drunken haze was admittedly pretty damn funny.

“Eh, I s’pose. Flew right by for me. Proll’y ‘cause I was busy givin’ ol’ Cagney a hard time… which hey, I still think he needed. The guy went bonkers, y’couldn’t go two feet without crushing one of the umpteen millions of flowers he planted, an’ when you did he just flipped his damn lid like it was your fault. I mean…” he trailed off, tapping his fingers on the counter. “I was the one who sent ‘im off the deep end in the first place, I ain’t denying that. But… ah, whatever. All that matters is he’s better now. Sweet as sugar some days, I hear. Sent me a real terse birthday card a few months ago… what a weird guy.”

Upon hearing the door to the deck opening, Goopy looked up to see one of the farmers, from up the path. The tall one. Goopy hoped he had come to drink himself to sleep. “You’re Psy, right?” he asked. “Ya come back from yer trip today?”

The farmer’s eyebrows went up a bit as he sat down beside the Devil. “Who told you I was off on a trip?”

Goopy rolled his eyes. “Yer pal Tato comes in here ‘least twice a week to pour his heart out with two pints of rum. M’sure I know more about you an’ your damn farm than I ever needed to know in my life.”

“... Well, that is a discussion for another day. Just provide me with a tall glass of cognac so that I can think,” Psy replied distractedly, massaging at his temples with his fingers.

It was Goopy’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Think? Kid, you drink so you can forget stuff and go braindead and do things you regret later.”

“Oh, for myself it’s quite the contrary!” Psy insisted. “Except for the latter, I suppose. Anyhow, I find myself able to think tenfold faster with a bit of liquor in my system. And goodness, I have far too much in my head to sort it all out sober.” As soon as Goopy finished filling the glass, the skinny man snatched it up and began feverishly sipping at it.

“Sooo, what happened?” the Devil asked, hardly even holding his gaze on the man next to him. “You, er… dammit, I forgot which one you were... ugh, how many redheads did I help out…”

Psy was hardly listening to him. “Well, I… first things first, I’m on my way back to the Isle by boat, and all of a sudden, I get an absolutely nasty headache as all of these… memories just pop up out of nowhere! Memories decades old, that I hadn’t even thought to think about in quite some time, and on top of that, names come waltzing through my mind! Old names, caught me by surprise, they did.” He finished the glass and indicated a need for a refill. Goopy obliged and he continued. “I return home to my oldest, most valued friends, whose original names I _could not recall_ up until a few hours prior, and they’ve got… ohh, so many things to tell me. Apparently, things only get interesting around here when I leave! ‘The casino’s closed, Cuphead’s gone, the Devil’s not the Devil anymore!’ Honestly, part of them had to know it was too much for a mind as complex-yet-delicate as mine to handle.” The Devil gave Goopy a lazy side-eye and the latter snickered. “In summation, it has been a most unacceptable day,” finished Psy with a huff, just as he finished his second glass.

“Y’sound pretty, uh, disturbed about all that,” the Devil remarked before taking another long drink. 

“Well, I… I wouldn’t say I’m disturbed, per sé,” Psy scoffed. “This kind of nonsense is just what I’ve come to expect from Inkwell Isle. Nonsense I once partook in, no less! I simply wish my compatriots would not just overwhelm my thoughts all at once with their… hmm,” he trailed off, his bright eyes focusing on the Devil beside him. “You… look… familiar, sir…”

Goopy watched with amusement as the once feared and powerful Devil inched away towards the edge of his barstool. “Why d’you say that?” he slurred. Psy leaned forward and squinted, adjusting the monocle over his left eye before widening them both in surprise.

“Goodness, you’re the Devil, aren’t you!” he exclaimed, words spilling energetically from his mouth as he tapped a finger against his chin erratically. “I was told you had changed, certainly, but I was not expecting this particular development…” 

“How didja know, mister… mister smarty...tall… guy…” rambled the Devil, pulling the collar of his coat over as much of his face as he could. Psy was faster: he seized the Devil’s lapels and drew him in close.

“Ah, yes, I never forget a face! And even on a different canvas, yours is… quite distinct,” noted Psy, jabbing a long finger at the shorter man’s nose. The Devil swatted his hand away with a sneer.

“Y’could ‘least clean my clock ‘stead of pokin’ fun at my dumb body. This is the stupidest revenge you could think of,” he snarked, taking the half-empty bottle of cognac meant for Psy and gulping down the rest of it before cringing. “Blegh, stuff tastes saccharine…”

“Oh, because I would presumably not be particularly enamored with your presence succeeding a period of my history defined by the absurd workings of your arcane manipulation?” questioned Psy esoterically, talking even faster than before. It looked like drinking just made him more of a nuisance than usual. “Goodness, I would be a rather immature mind if I were to place all the blame of my predicaments upon you, I mean, it was in fact my spontaneous burst of innovation that landlocked my companions and myself, and you know it did indeed take me some time to realize that, you only supplied the means to an end, an end that I so erroneously conceived!” 

“So you’re sayin’ you don’t think it’s my fault,” summarized the Devil wearily. Psy pinched the bridge of his nose and narrowed his eyes in the Devil’s direction.

“Well, you… certainly had a role to play in this conundrum of ours, but… ugh, I’ve been sick of discussing this little lapse in judgement for months! Weepy and Moe are as well, they’ve got other things to think about, we all do! It’s in the past, goddammit… it doesn’t matter anymore. None of it does. Only thing we have to remember all that are our names, and goodness, it’s been far too much time for us to just go changing those back, I mean, my name used to be Cornelius! Who wants to go through the trouble of using that?! Not even myself!”

“S’better than Psycarrot…” Goopy muttered facetiously. As Psy prattled out a strongly worded rebuttal, the boxer’s attention dwindled towards the Devil, who was getting off his barstool. “Where’re you goin’, lord of evil?”

“Outside,” muttered the Devil, wobbling from side to side. “I’ve got uh… I’ve got, someone, I gotta go see…”

Goopy watched the man stagger towards the door and swing it open with a sloppy flourish. “Hm,” he muttered, mostly to himself since Psy was pretty much lost in drunk-lousy-smartass land. “I don’t think that Devil knows he needs to pay for his drinks.”

\---

Seeing double was still a pretty novel phenomenon, but at the moment it was just a little bit inconvenient. The Devil had no idea where the hell he was, even though he’d walked to the bar barely an hour ago completely sober. Well, not completely, but he was having a hard time remembering anything that had happened more than a few hours ago. He just needed to find his way to… the farm, maybe? For someone who had set up shop in Inkwell Isle for over a hundred years, the Devil had next to no idea where anything was. That, and he was so plastered he could hardly get a clear view of his own two feet. 

“Right, uh… left, I guess,” he muttered, stumbling up the stone stairs away from the boat that housed the bar. Half of him didn’t know where he was even going, but one tiny part of his brain did have some weird, moronically invigorating plan in mind. He stumbled a little farther along the wide, grassy road, before the subject of his drunken quest happened to cross his path. Convenient, though the Devil hadn’t expected the kid to be out so late.

“Heyyy, mug-kid! Mug… guy? I’ll, uh… I’ll work on that. Maybe. Might forget to work on it,” he rambled, wobbling closer as he did. Mugman looked him up and down and made a face.

“What do you want?” he asked tersely. “Looks like you’re drunk, so I’m guessing nothing important.”

“Ohh, it’s important! Yeah! Very! I, um… I just wanted toooo…” he trailed off. “To tell you, I’m… I’m sorry, about your brother. Um… dammit…”

“Cuphead,” Mugman reminded him flatly. “And I’m not really looking to receive your sympathies, especially after all you’ve done just for your own amusement.”

“Yeah, well, you ain’t allowed to not accept my apology!” snapped the Devil, his already hazy tone wavering. “I’m just… I dunno, y’don’t really, think about how big death is when you’re in charge of one of the places folks go when they kick the bucket. That, and, uh, I ain’t sure I’ve ever cared about anyone, least not enough to care when they die.”

“That’s… not very reassuring,” Mugman muttered. “Guess it makes sense, though. If you are being honest, I guess… thanks for still thinking about him, at least.”

The Devil ran a hand through his hair. “Actually, eh, wasn’t really thinking about him ‘til that big bartender guy brought ‘im up. And then I thought hey, I probably should say somethin’, seein’ as I’m the reason he decided to get all self-sacrificial or whatever. But eh, don’t worry about it, kid. It’s uh… it’s in the past, right? Just like those contracts your debtor pals made. Doesn’t matter anymore. None of it does.”

Mugman narrowed his eyes and averted his gaze, biting his lip and appearing to choke down some kind of sob. “... I haven’t exactly had a whole year to get over things,” he muttered. “I lost Cuphead not five days ago, and… I guess you don’t know how grief works, but that’s not enough time to say that it’s all in the past. And I’m… in all honesty, I’m not ready to talk to you. Especially not when you’re so out of your right mind. Give me time, and… when you do decide to have a good talk about everything, please be sober.” He turned away, and started leaving towards the second isle. 

“Wait, kid, I – _ghh!_ ” exclaimed the Devil in annoyance, tripping on a rock and landing square on his face. At least getting hurt was something he was familiar with. Some seconds later, he felt a pair of large, gloved hands wrap around his torso and lift him up.

“Y’see who you needed to see?” asked Goopy casually, putting the Devil over his shoulder and walking back towards the boat. The Devil groaned. 

“I jus’ don’t get it, whyyy’s everything such a damn problem around here?! Everyone’s mad at basically nothing, an’ that guy with the stupid hair said it doesn’t matter, so why…” He was too tired to keep going. Goopy chuckled.

“I’ve got a spot at the bar you can hole up in ‘til you find a place of your own. You can work for me for a few weeks, too. Get used to bein’, uh, human, I guess, an’ work off the tab for all those drinks you ordered while you’re at it,” he offered coyly.

“... Alright… but I’ve got… things to do… with people…”

“Those folks’ll still be there in the morning, pally. An’ so will you.”

The Devil groaned, and allowed his eyelids to droop as he began to fall into a deep, drunken stupor that would hopefully erase his memory of everything that happened the night before.

“... Can’t complain about a good gratuitous clause, I guess.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all so much for reading! as always i am open to any questions you have for me, this was a pretty crazy story after all, and a lot has been left unanswered. i'm so grateful to you all for sticking with me on this journey. thanks again for your support and patience, and as always, have a lovely lovely day!!!

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading! i appreciate the support. at the moment this fic is on an "every other week" schedule, though this can change if i see enough interest. so comment if you want to see more! and if you want to see more of this AU, period, check out my DA: https://www.deviantart.com/determunition/ I'll be posting art for this and other NnV stuff fairly often, again depending on interest level. Thanks again, and have a lovely day!


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